History and Apologetics

Father Dwight Longenecker makes a number of dead-on points about the anti-catholic use of historical scandals in the Catholic Church:

One of the things that impressed me in my own journey to the Catholic Church is that the dirty laundry was out there for everyone to see. There was no big cover up about the Borgia popes. There was no secret history about the shameful history of the papacy in the seventh and eighth centuries. There was no massive whitewash of the sins of Catholics. The history was all there.

Two things impressed me about this: first of all, the slanted history, the half truths, the lies and the 'secret history' was all produced not by Catholics, but by anti-Catholic forces. It was the Protestant propagandists who produced all the dark, dirty, nasty stuff about Catholics. Of course they built on some terrible events, exaggerated, told the story one sided and twisted things (usually from a sincerely wounded perspective) and made stuff up. The Catholics didn't for the most part. They behaved like the kid with caught with his hand in the cookie jar. "Yup. Fair cop. You got me. Not good. Sorry. Try not to do it again." In the face of this wrong doing it was the Protestants who were all uppity and self righteous about it all. The Catholics were just ashamed.

The second thing that impressed me was that the spotted history of the Catholic Church was actually just what you would expect of a two thousand year history of a religious organization. The history of the Catholic Church read (if you like) like the Old Testament. It was one long soap opera of human sin, repentance, divine punishment, shameful pride, lust, ambition, vanity and folly all mixed up with miracles, divine intervention, saints, holy men and women, and through it all God's amazing providence winning through.

So when I read the history of the Catholic Church the very sinfulness and awfulness of some Catholics' behavior rather confirmed the whole thing as being authentic. What would have been very suspicious indeed is if every Pope was a Leo the Great, every priest a Cure d'Ars, every bishop a Robert Bellarmine, every Catholic a St Francis or a Therese of Lisieux. Now that would definitely have been smelling of rat.

So when I therefore read about 'secret Catholic conspiracies to cover up the truth' (Let's say about 'Pope Joan' or some such) it's laughable, because the Catholic Church just doesn't do that. It's not because Catholics may not wish to do that, but because the Catholic Church isn't the all powerful, megalomaniacal organization that its critics make out. When you read the history of the Catholic Church you get the impression, therefore, that this is real history.

You got saints. You got sinners. You got triumph. You got defeat. You got ups. You got downs. You got crimes. You got heroic sanctity.

It's just what you would expect. It's down to earth. It's simple.

It is an interesting phenomenon that the people who work themselves into the thickest lather over the dastardly Catholic Church, or the threat of priestly pedophiles, are those people with the least to fear. For example, the LDS troll on Pastor Jan's very ecumenical site has really outdone himself this thread with his conspiratorial view of the Catholic church, even to the extent of absurdly arguing that the reason for the pedophile priest scandal of recent years was the fact that Aquinas somehow taught that rape was a far less serious sin than masturbation. [Search for "Gecko."]

For the record, this anti-catholic trope is apparently a bit of conventional wisdom in some circles and is completely bogus. Aquinas's comments were directed toward the technical issue of whether rape or masturbation was "worse" as regards the vice of lust, and since rape sounded more in injustice than lust, as a matter of measuring lust, masturbation worse. This analysis clearly had nothing to do with (a) which was the worst sin with respect to injustice or violence or (b) which was worst in some over-all sense.

But as Father Longenecker points out, it's all out there to read. Nothing has been hidden, redrafted or lost from the corpus of Aquinas' writings. It's there, warts and all, for anyone to read.

Good Read

An Irish Op-ed on how our boys comported themselves with the dignity expected of American soldiers at an Irish wedding:

When next in Newmarket-on-Fergus, I intend to find Eamon Walsh, and buy him a pint. His daughter Amelia's marriage wedding last week was turned into another bogus anti-American media event.

Some reports declared that uniformed US soldiers, staying overnight in the Clare Inn, had gatecrashed the event, and were most unwelcome. In fact, the soldiers -- delayed because their Iraq-bound plane was grounded through a technical fault -- had been invited to join the Walsh wedding party. Eamon, Amelia and her husband Sean O'Neill later said they were proud to have them as guests.

Good. Those young people belong to the bravest generation of soldiers the United States has ever produced. They are not the conscript-soldiers of America's wars of the 20th century, who freed much of the world. They are volunteers. They knew when they enlisted in the US army or the Marine Corps that they would be going to war, with a real possibility of death or serious injury. No words are powerful enough to describe the esteem that I have for them.

They are not just fighting for the US. They are in the forefront to save western civilisation. I'm not glorifying war. Civilians who do that are disgusting, since war is so disgusting. One young British lieutenant recently lost both legs, one arm and his genitalia in a roadside bombing.

However, these men and woman in uniform have made their choice. They know what is going on. If Iraq slips from the comity of nations into the hands of Sunni fascists, a stunning blow for the West will have been inflicted. If Afghanistan were to follow, then Pakistan would assuredly go next. And then the world might be faced with the first ever nuclear-armed, death-worshipping jihadist-Nazi state.

Taliban now controls much of Afghanistan. No doubt elements of its complex alliance can be wooed into the sort of belligerent passivity which is the best kind of normality which that strange country knows. Others must be fought, lest they return to power again, and not merely banish women into an internal exile of illiterate sexual slavery, but turn their country into a vast terrorist training-camp. The Afghan military project is not another example of American adventurism: it is simply our civilisation's instinct for survival where it is most vulnerable.

Once it was at the gates of Vienna and Budapest. Now those gates stand just this side of the Khyber Pass. Such is the profound sense of cultural isolationism which our 70 years of bogus neutralism has engendered, that I'm not sure how many people in Ireland understand the scale of the Afghanistan problem. Total British casualties in Helmand province alone -- through enemy action, accident or illness -- stand at nearly 2,500. Three of the 191 dead -- 1.6pc - were Irish. More will follow.

The British army has been scandalously deprived of necessary equipment for a task which began an entire First World War ago. Use that as an example. It began in 1914; the first tank was invented in 1915; and in August 1918, 650 tanks launched a mass assault on German positions at Amiens.

That was Britain then. Consider Britain now, with its putrid array of armoured vehicles which are still vulnerable to the improvised bombs of illiterate peasants. (Google 'Jackal' and have a good laugh at the picture of soldiers sitting in the front this dune-buggy: they are out in the open, have no armour around them, and do not even have a windscreen; and then stop laughing, because good men -- including Marine George McKibben from Mayo -- have died in this criminally murderous abortion of a machine).

Most regular readers will know that I am Irish, Brit-born, and, generally speaking, pro-Brit. So without prejudice, I can say that the ineptitude of recent British military operations is in that same epic military tradition which gave the world Gallipoli 1915, Kut 1916, Narvik 1940, Dunkirk 1940, Tobruk 1942, Singapore 1942, Kos/Leros 1943, and Arnhem 1944. You could almost have added Basra, Iraq, 2008 to that melancholy list, but for the US Marine Corps' intervention there. And now in Helmand, the British have been getting around in three Morris Oxfords and two-a-half Hillman Minx helicopters. They have thereby forfeited the right to have a separate command in a coalition war. British soldiers -- those faithful, fateful warriors -- will surely find better leaders in the US Army and Marine Corps-- as should the Danes, the Estonians, the Poles and -- I hope, one day -- the Irish.

The USMC has now taken over in Helmand, with their hundreds of helicopters and near IED-resistant personnel carriers and, most of all, with their battlefield professionalism. Let the US rule. National independence of command merely confuses -- not just battlefield tactics, but the historical reality. Here we have it. One cause, one culture, one freedom. For the demographic fifth column is already across Europe.

Its historic self-belief could be lethally enhanced if the West is defeated in Afghanistan. Thus the cause of the USA is the cause of Ireland. And the welcome that Newmarket-on-Fergus gave to those heroic US soldiers should be seen as being on behalf of us all.

Wow!

How cool if we could hear the same thing from Americans.

Voltaire, call your office.

The pope's representative in Angola called for an end to accusations of witchcraft laid against children, some of whom have been tortured. Now leaving Angola, Bishop Angelo Becciu will go now to Cuba, another country beset with occult practices.

Cuba????

I thought that Cuba was all atheisty and rationalisticy.

From the article:

The outgoing papal representative in Angola and Sao Tome & Principe, Archbishop Angelo Becciu, has called for an end to witchcraft accusations against children. During a mass marking the 124th anniversary of the Santa Ana Church in Caxito, the Nuncio affirmed that, "the charges are a frequent practice on the African continent and they must be eliminated", According to the state news agency ANGOP.

Reports say the although most Angolans say they are Catholic, belief in witchcraft is widespread in a country recovering from an almost three-decade long civil war and where an estimated two thirds of the population are poor.

Children are accused of witchcraft, resulting in their abuse, abandonment and, in some cases, death. It appears more frequently among the Bakongo people, concentrated in the Uige, Zaire and Cabinda provinces in northern Angola. The situation is becoming of grave concern as atrocities against children increase by the year. Last year 40 children were rescued from the premises of a group calling itself the Evangelical Church of Traditional Healing.

State media reported the children, some just babies, had been made to fast for 15 days, had been burned on their arms and had perfume poured in their eyes. The Angolan government says it is taking the problem seriously and there has been much public discussion about these so-called sects which are often, according to state media reports, linked to Congolese immigrants.

Hidden Costs of Divorce

Divorce can kill you.

Divorce has a lingering, detrimental impact on health that even remarriage cannot fully repair, a study suggests.

A Chicago study involving 8,652 people aged 51 to 61 found divorced people have 20% more chronic illnesses such as cancer than those who never marry.

The figure only drops to 12% for those who remarry, researchers write in the Journal of Health and Social Behaviour.

They say we start adulthood with a "health stock" that is kept or eroded depending on our marital experience.

Only those who are continuously married can expect the same rate of chronic health problems as the never-wedded, the study suggests.

Although people who remarry after a divorce or being widowed do tend to be happier as a result - being no more depressed than those continuously married and less depressed than those who never married - they gain little in terms of chronic health conditions.

People who remarried had 12% more chronic health conditions than those continuously married, which was slightly less than the 20% for the divorced or widowed who did not remarry.

Researcher Dr Linda Waite, a sociologist at the University of Chicago, said divorce or widowhood undermines health because incomes drop and stress develops over issues such as shared child care.

Stresses and strains

Whereas marriage tends to bring an immediate health benefit, in that it improves health behaviours for men and financial well-being for women.

But remarriage does not heal all.

She said: "Some health situations, like depression, seem to respond both quickly and strongly to changes in current conditions.

"In contrast, conditions such as diabetes and heart disease develop slowly over a substantial period and show the impact of past experiences, which is why health is undermined by divorce or widowhood, even when a person remarries."

Anastasia de Waal, of the think tank Civitas, said: "This research highlights the fact that whilst divorce has become much more common, it can take not just a tremendous emotional and financial toll, but also a heavy health one."

Christine Northan, a counsellor for Relate, said: "I'm not surprised by the findings. It's another reason to work hard to make marriages last, unless it is a very destructive relationship.

"It's a good idea if you can use a messy divorce to understand both yourself better and why the relationship did not work.

"If you do that, you will be in a better place to go into a second successful marriage.

"But if you are drawn to people who are toxic for you, then you may be better off staying single."

She said a surprising number of people unconsciously look for someone like their first wife or husband and that the chance of a second marriage ending in divorce was two-fold.

GatesGate Explained

Sean P. Daily explains that Professor Gates and Officer Crowley are both Irish and related to each other:

I should have known that this whole flap would boil down to a fight between a couple of Micks, between a Shanty Irish cop and a Lace Curtain Irish perfesser. The only thing missing is the Paddy Wagon.

This explains Gates' strange outburst when Officer Crowley responded to a routine police call. How? Gates suffers from what appears to be a particularly severe case of Irish Alzheimer's, wherein you forget everything but the grudge.

The Shanty v. Curtain Lace thing can be vicious. I personally am descended from both strands of the Irish experience on both sides, but, oddly, neither sides of my family can quite agree on which is the "Shanty Irish" side.

Please, fewer "teachable moments" and less "dialogue on race"

Got Inspiration?

100 Incredibly Inspiring Christian blogs.

Obamacare - Democrats deny choice on abortion

Mark Shea points out how the Democrats narrowly avoided doing the right thing, i.e., not making abortion a mandatory provision of every insurance policy. The Democrats' narrow escape from virtue involved Henry Waxman using a procedural maneuver:

There was late-night drama in Waxman's committee Thursday as an anti-abortion amendment passed when conservative Democrats joined Republicans to support it — then failed less than two hours later when Waxman used a procedural maneuver to bring it up for a second vote.

In the intervening time one conservative Democrat — Rep. Bart Gordon of Tennessee — changed his vote from "yes" to "no." And a second conservative Democrat who hadn't voted the first time — Rep. Zack Space of Ohio — voted "no." It was enough to take the amendment down on a vote of 29 to 30.

The measure would have specified that health care legislation moving through Congress may not impose requirements for coverage of abortion, except in limited cases.

The committee approved a Democratic-written measure specifying that abortions would not be required as part of government-approved insurance benefit packages. The measure, which passed 30-28, says health plans in a new purchasing exchange aren't required to cover abortion but that each region of the country should have at least one plan that does so.

The amendment also limits the use of federal funding for abortions. Democrats cast the measure as a compromise but Republicans mostly opposed it.

Abortion - You have no "Freedom of Choice"(TM) when it comes to your subsidization of the murder of innocents.

Bias in Science

A majority of scientists identify themselves as liberals. The public thinks the number is more like 20%.

The Real Question is, "Is it a coincidence that she's from Northern California?

As Mark Shea observes, "A concerned citizen probes the sinister lawn sprinkler conspiracy and holds forth on the shocking changes which have take place in the laws of physics over the past 20 years."

A Book you should totally get

God's Philosophers: How the medieval world laid the foundations for modern science.

Faculty Life

Iowahawk brilliantly recycles some old jokes in this expose of what it's like to be a professor in this benighted world after the arrest of "Skip" Gates:

Our table exchanged knowing glances, for we knew immediately that Skip was only the latest victim of a system that singles out the Harvard faculty asshole for stigmatization and unequal justice. It is a system that all of us knew too well, and provided an opportunity for an open conversation about our shared experiences as Harvard faculty assholes in America while waiting for Sergio to bring the dessert cart.

One after one came the cascade of stark stories: the rolled eyes of our department secretaries. The Spanish language mockery of our office janitors. The foul gestures of drunken strap-hanging Red Sox lumpenproles aboard the MBTA. The frequent police stops on the highway to Cape Ann and Martha's Vineyard for "Volvoing While Asshole." And then there are the insulting media stereotypes, where we are routinely caricatured as pompous, effete, self-important, irrelevant elitists. All, I might add, by a motley collection of lowbrow inferiors, few of whom have ever published in a peer-reviewed journal. Let alone edit one.

Craig Ferguson on the Fall of Civilization



At least, the Widget, the Wadget and Boff are not fans of the Jonas Brothers.

I'm raising the youngest curmudgeons in human history.

Backing off from a science fictional future

"China steps back from one child policy":

China is taking the first step towards ending its one-child policy with the authorities in Shanghai encouraging thousands of couples to have a second baby.

For the first time in 30 years, officials in the country’s economic capital have urged eligible parents to plan for a second child. The move was prompted by the growing demographic imbalance in the city and fears that the younger generation will not be able to support the ageing population. The one-child system, where all pregnancies are monitored and sometimes terminated by order, was enforced to control a population that is the largest in the world at more than 1.3 billion.

“We advocate eligible couples to have two kids because it can help to reduce the proportion of the ageing people and alleviate a workforce shortage in the future,” said Xie Linli, the director of the Shanghai Population and Family Planning Commission.

And:

“Shanghai’s over-60 population already exceeds three million, or 21.6 per cent of registered residents,” Zhang Meixin, a spokesman for the Shanghai commission, said. “That is already near the average figure of developed countries and is still rising quickly.”

By 2020 the proportion of elderly is expected to rise to 34 per cent of the city’s population.

The elderly population is rising at a similar rate across the rest of China, mainly in cities, with the working-age population expected to start shrinking in about 2015. The overall population will peak in 2030, with China becoming the first country to grow old before it grows rich and therefore able to support a nation of pensioners.

The US Centre for Strategic and International Studies warned in April that by 2050, China would have more than 438 million people over 60, with more than 100 million aged 80 or over. The country will have only 1.6 working-age adults to support every person aged 60 or above, compared with 7.7 in 1975.

On the other hand, it looks like the Chinese have adopted some Western values:

Most newly married couples registered in Shanghai were only children and are eligible to have two children, but many do not take up the privilege. The number of such couples has risen to 7,300 last year from 4,300 in 2005.

One couple in Beijing with a two-year-old son, who are entitled to a second child, said that they preferred to forgo the privilege. “It costs more than 35,000 yuan (£3,500) a year just to leave our baby in a kindergarten. Why spend this amount of money on a second?” one of the parents said. Many young couples are willing to have one child to continue the family line, but they let the grandparents raise it so that they can go to bars and restaurants and go shopping and travelling without being restricted by the responsibilities of children.

In Shanghai, where the rise in incomes is among the fastest in the country, young couples want to enjoy a level of prosperity unknown for more than a century.

Communism is great for testing social policies only found in science fiction books. What else could provide inspiration for "Big Brother"?

China's "one child policy" was inspired by the Club of Rome's report from the late-70s about how the world was going to run out of resources by the year 2000 unless it embarked on a crash plan to reduce population. China bought into that quackery and is paying the price. Interestingly, while China is backing off from the legacy of the Club of Rome, the Obama administration has appointed someone who peddled that nonsense as its science advisor.

Reflections on "Angry Calvinists

By a former Calvinist.

Fortunately, "angry Calvinists" seem to be an internet phenomena.

This post from the same blog notes the resurgence in popularity of Calvinism, which raises the question of why this might be so. Calvinism - or Calvinist-like theologies - historically seem to wax when Christianity is faced with a threat from Islam. Could the threat from Islam in this historical moment of time have something to do with Calvinism's waxing popularity?

The post also offers this succinct deconstruction of Calvinism's nominalism via an essay written by Arminian Roger E. Olson:

Furthermore, I find Calvin's doctrine of God repulsive. It elevates God's sovereignty over his love, leaving God’s reputation in question. What I mean is that Calvin's all-determining, predestining deity is at best morally ambiguous and at worst morally repugnant.

Much to the chagrin of some contemporary Calvinists, Calvin clearly taught that God foreordained the fall and rendered it certain. (Institutes of the Christian Religion III:XXIII.8)

He also affirmed double predestination (III:XXI.5) and displayed callous disregard for the reprobate, who he admitted God compelled to obedience (disobedience). (I:XVIII.2) Calvin distinguished between two modes of God's will—what later Calvinists have called God's decretive and perceptive wills. (III:XXIV.17) God decrees that the sinner shall sin while at the same time commanding him not to sin and condemning him for doing what he was determined by God to do. To Calvin this all lies in the secret purposes of God into which we should not peer too deeply, but it leaves a bitter taste in the mouth of anyone who regards God as, above all, love.
John Wesley commented on the Calvinists' claim that God loves even the reprobate in some way. As one contemporary Calvinist put it, "God loves all people in some ways but only some people in all ways." Wesley said that this is a love such as makes the blood run cold.

Calvin's successor in Geneva, Theodore Beza [mentor to James Arminius], commented that those who find themselves suffering in the flames of hell for eternity can at least take comfort in the fact that they are there for the greater glory of God. To paraphrase Wesley, that is a glory such as sends chills down the spine. God foreordains some of his own creatures, created in his own image, to eternal hell for his own glory? Calvin may not have put it quite that bluntly, but many Calvinists have and it is a necessary extrapolation of the inner logic of consistent Calvinism. (Institutes III:XXII.11)

I have been heavily criticized by some of my Calvinist friends for saying that my biggest problem with Calvinism (by which I mean consistent divine determinism) is that it makes it difficult for me to tell the difference between God and the devil. (I am not saying Calvinists worship the devil!)

For me, nothing about the Christian worldview is more important than regarding God and the devil as absolute competitors in this universe and its tragic history. God is good and desires the good of every creature. As church father Irenaeus said, "The glory of God is man fully alive." The devil is bad and desires harm for every creature. To view the devil as God's instrument makes a mockery of the entire biblical narrative.

This post gestures at what may be another possibly Islamic influenced theme in Calvinism - the radical separation of God and Creation:

Jonathan Edwards, famed Calvinist theologian, begins his sermon "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God," preached to his home church in Northampton, Massachusetts in 1741, thus:

The God that holds you over the pit of hell, much as one holds a spider, or some loathsome insect over the fire, abhors you, and is dreadfully provoked; his wrath towards you burns like a fire; he looks upon you as worthy of nothing else but to be cast into the fire; he is of purer eyes than to bear to have you in his sight; you are ten thousand times so abominable in his eyes as the most hateful venomous serpent is in ours.1

Contrast Edwards' model of God with the gospel witness of Jesus Christ: "Just as Moses lifted up the snake in the wilderness, so the Son of Man must be lifted up, that everyone who believes may have eternal life in him. For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him" (John 3:14-17 TNIV, emphases added).

Absent from Jesus' model is any hint that God is holding people over the pit of hell, much as some loathsome insect which one abhors, perceiving them to be worthless and abominable. Jesus' gospel is diametrically opposed to that of Edwards. I fear that Edwards' distorted version of the gospel model of God is not only inaccurate theologically but also anthropologically, since it was out of God's love for the sinful world that he sent his Son, not to condemn it, but to save it.

Nothing there I would disagree with, but I would offer the further Thomistic point that everything that exists is good inasmuch as it exists and, inasmuch as it exists, it exists because it is loved by God.

The modern - post-Reformation, post-Enlightenment - perspective on God's relationship to the world views God as outside Creation looking down on it: God created the world a long time ago and since that time looks down on it, occasionally intervening in Creation. This seems not only natural, but the only possible way of thinking about the subject. It, therefore, involves a radical paradigm shift to conceive of the possibility that God might be involved in Creation in a radically different way than we are involved. Thus, in the Summa Theologica, 1.20,2, St. Thomas writes:

God loves all existing things. For all existing things, in so far as they exist, are good, since the existence of a thing is itself a good; and likewise, whatever perfection it possesses. Now it has been shown above (Question 19, Article 4) that God's will is the cause of all things. It must needs be, therefore, that a thing has existence, or any kind of good, only inasmuch as it is willed by God. To every existing thing, then, God wills some good. Hence, since to love anything is nothing else than to will good to that thing, it is manifest that God loves everything that exists. Yet not as we love. Because since our will is not the cause of the goodness of things, but is moved by it as by its object, our love, whereby we will good to anything, is not the cause of its goodness; but conversely its goodness, whether real or imaginary, calls forth our love, by which we will that it should preserve the good it has, and receive besides the good it has not, and to this end we direct our actions: whereas the love of God infuses and creates goodness.

Things don't exist accidently; they exist because of the love of God. In order to exist, a thing must be loved by God because existence is itself a good thing. Further, all goodness comes from God, including the first good of existence itself.

Accordingly, equating any existing thing - including human sinners - as so repugnant to God that they are equivalent to a man holding a "loathsome insect" over a fire is to impose human understanding on God. The man holding a "loathsome insect" over the fire did not love the insect into existence and thereafter maintain the insect's existence through love.

Obama and the Post-Racial America - Hope and Status Quo

VDH on the arrest of African-American Harvard professor - it "has everything to do with insider privilege and aristocratic disdain."

Typically sensible:

When the healer President Obama casually characterizes law enforcement as acting “stupidly” and then blithely says we all know that African-Americans and Latinos are stopped disproportionately — without the corollary that we all know that African-American and Latino males also commit and are convicted of crimes in numbers higher than their general percentages of the population and therefore can naturally also become more likely suspects — then we simply regress on questions of race, though in frustration rather than due to the “cowardice” cited by the attorney general.

It is tragic that the officer did not say, “Sorry for bothering you, Professor Gates. Of course I recognize you and regret that I had to bother you while you were legitimately breaking into your own home. This won’t happen again.” (And of course, Professor Gates might have said, “No problem; I’m relieved you’re looking out for my house while I’m gone.”) But as the Romans said, sumus homines, non dei.

Bottom line: Professor Gates probably overreacted, insulted a police officer who was trying to ensure that his home was not being broken into as was first reported, wrongly alleged racism on the part of the officer, and got arrested for his disorderly conduct amid witnesses and fellow police officers who confirm the arresting officer’s narrative — and then assumed — quite rightly as it turns out — that his Harvard connections, personal friendship with the president, governor, and mayor would allow him lattitudes not open to others.

Meanwhile, that the rest of the country is supposed to cringe and feel sorry that we are still a racist nation — as an African-American president, governor, and mayor all weigh in on the plight of an endowed African-American professor — seems odd. Sorry, but somehow I think most would tend to disagree.

And if the public comes away with any lasting impression, it will be that an impromptu Obama, for all the post-racial rhetoric, still sees controversies in prisms that reflect stereotyped us/them racialism rather than looking at each incident empirically.

There were no winners in this comic tragedy — but one clear loser: last night, the president of the United States.

My quick take - did the professor overreact? Certainly. Did the professor have cause to overreact? You bet'cha. Did the professor act like a jerk? Definitely. Should he have been arrested? Probably not. Lesson - Don't lip off to the cops - no matter how much you are in the right - even if you can call the "Chief." Act like a gentleman and call the Chief later, after you calm down.

Aquinas Watch

Aquinas by way of the Marxist literary critic Terry Eagleton on his book rubbishing Dawkins and Hitchens.

Some quotes:

"Imagine," fired Eagleton, "someone holding forth on biology whose only knowledge of the subject is the Book of British Birds and you have a rough idea of what it feels like to read Richard Dawkins on theology."

And :

Eagleton is particularly exercised by the New Atheists' tendency to conflate reason and rationality. "We hold many beliefs that have no unimpeachably rational justification, but are nevertheless reasonable to entertain.")

And:

As an ex-Catholic myself, I said, I couldn't help but wonder why you were quite so generous about your Catholic schooling in your autobiography The Gatekeeper.

"I valued the way it taught me to think analytically, to not be afraid of analytic thought, however nonsensical some of the content surely was. There was an opportunity to argue."

And:

Eagleton can, of course, fight back against this kind of rebuttal if he can only show that there is something in theology which undermines the arguments against religion made by the new atheists. And this indeed is what he is up to in Reason, Faith and Revolution when he seeks to show, with the use of the theologian Thomas Aquinas, that the God so readily dismissed by Dawkins and Hitchens is not a god that many theologians, or indeed believers, would recognise. While God for Dawkins and his ilk is "some kind of mega-manufacturer or cosmic chief executive officer" who set the world in motion and now directs it from his home in the clouds, Aquinas was quite ready to entertain the possibility "that the world had no origin at all". Dawkins and Hitchens are equally theologically illiterate in their view of religion as a failed attempt to explain the world. "Christianity was never meant to be an explanation of anything in the first place." God is not a mega-manufacturer. "He is rather what sustains all things in being by his love and would still be this even if the world had no beginning."

I quoted this passage back to Eagleton and asked for some elaboration. Did Aquinas really reject the Biblical story of the creation of the world? "Oh yes. He paid a great deal of attention to scripture but he was a mainstream Catholic and not a fundamentalist so he didn't take it literally. For Aquinas, God the Creator is not a hypothesis about how the world originated."

And:

But is the emperor really as well dressed as such critics allow? I decided to press him further about his theology. "You say that God made the world simply for the love and delight of it. But you don't mean 'made' in the usual sense of the word as you've already insisted that God did not create the world."

"That's right. Aquinas is saying that the relationship between God and the world is about the fact that the world is in some ways His. Not in the sense that my shoes are mine because I manufactured them but because at the centre of the world lies his love and freedom. God didn't create the world. He loved it into being. Now what that means, God knows, but that's exactly what Aquinas was saying. The concept of God is what will not let you go. He will not let you slip through his fingers. It's that kind of unconditional love. If you like, that's impossible. We can only know conditional love, but if you are to have some kind of authentic idea of God that's the place from which you have to start, not seeing God as some kind of manufacturer.

Generation Narcissus tells their parents to jump on that ice berg

Obama on changing the culture of how we deal with the medical problems of the elderly: take a pain pill.

Slouching toward Gomorah

Francis Beckwith points to incest in Hollywood - admittedly involving "step" rather than genetic relations - and to the legal defense of incest under the "right of privacy" offered by Jonathon Turley.

I think that the fact that there is no genetic relationship is not a justification. The vice of incest is that it sexualizes relationships that should not be sexualized. The relationship between parent and child is a kind of fiduciary relationship where the parent must act in exclusively the best interests of the child. Allowing the possibility of permitting sex on a case by case basis is recognized as impermissibly compromising that fiduciary relationship in other relationships - which is why lawyers may be disbarred for having sex, even consensual sex, with their clients. One of the things that parents have a fiduciary responsibility towards their children is equipping them with the skills and attitudes necessary to venture out into the world.

The fact that Morgan Freeman raised the 27 year old who he now intends to marry is the problem

Never go up against a car salesman when God, Guns and Guts are on the line.

Run this guy for Congress.

Auto dealer Mark Muller refuses to play the rube for CNN anchorbabe Carole Costello, who comes across as the teachers pet in high school.



As Suzanna Logan observes, "Frankly, I'm suprised that CNN even aired the clip. I'm sure they expected "country bumpkin" Muller to come out with the short end of the stick against "city slicker" Costello. What the producers didn't realize was that the stick was lodged so far up Ms. Costello's hind end that Muller wouldn't have had a shot at it ... not even with an AK-47."

Costello claim that she came from a rural background "twenty - errr, thirty - years ago" is totally believable.

Heresy


Episcopal Presiding Bishop Schori has identified the one group that cannot be tolerated within Christianity - Evangelical Protestants. In a church that has ordained homosexuals living with their partners and was able to live with a Bishop that denied the existence of God, and with a priest is a Muslim, Schori has lowered the boom on those who adhere to an individualistic view of salvation:

Episcopal Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori says it's "heresy" to believe that an individual can be saved through a sinner's prayer of repentance.

In her opening address to the church's General Conference in California, Jefferts Schori called that "the great Western heresy: that we can be saved as individuals, that any of us alone can be in right relationship with God."

The presiding bishop said that view is "caricatured in some quarters by insisting that salvation depends on reciting a specific verbal formula about Jesus."

According to Schori, it is heresy to believe that an individual's prayer can achieve a saving relationship with God. "That individualist focus is a form of idolatry, for it puts me and my words in the place that only God can occupy."

Schori previously opined about Catholics that:

Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori, the first woman to head the US Episcopal Church (ECUSA), has adopted a unique vision for the Episcopal church: a church not “interested in replenishing their ranks by having children.”

In an interview with New York Times Magazine, Bishop Jefferts Schori conjectured that the Episcopal Church’s now only 2.2 million faithful “used to be larger percentagewise”. However now, she says, “Episcopalians tend to be better-educated and tend to reproduce at lower rates than some other denominations. Roman Catholics and Mormons both have theological reasons for producing lots of children.”

In Schori's gospel, Jesus seems to have been all about toleration and acceptance of anyone who happened to be white, wealthy and liberal, and such non-whites as fitted the role of "recipients of charity", but not so much for non-wealthy, conservative-type folks.

Losing his religion

Jimmy Carter leaves the Southern Baptists.

On his way out, Carter indulges in his worst vice of shiving his old friends and supporters in order to buy credibility with new friends. Hence, he explains the SBC's theological position as follows:

So my decision to sever my ties with the Southern Baptist Convention, after six decades, was painful and difficult. It was, however, an unavoidable decision when the convention's leaders, quoting a few carefully selected Bible verses and claiming that Eve was created second to Adam and was responsible for original sin, ordained that women must be "subservient" to their husbands and prohibited from serving as deacons, pastors or chaplains in the military service.

He then equates American Baptists with Muslims who practice genital mutilitation.

But the good news is that Carter is positioning himself as a kind of supra-national spiritual leader who cure the world's evils when the world just imitates Jimmy, a kind of Imatio Carter:

I understand, however, why many political leaders can be reluctant about stepping into this minefield. Religion, and tradition, are powerful and sensitive areas to challenge. But my fellow Elders and I, who come from many faiths and backgrounds, no longer need to worry about winning votes or avoiding controversy - and we are deeply committed to challenging injustice wherever we see it.

The Elders are an independent group of eminent global leaders, brought together by former South African president Nelson Mandela, who offer their influence and experience to support peace building, help address major causes of human suffering and promote the shared interests of humanity. We have decided to draw particular attention to the responsibility of religious and traditional leaders in ensuring equality and human rights and have recently published a statement that declares: "The justification of discrimination against women and girls on grounds of religion or tradition, as if it were prescribed by a Higher Authority, is unacceptable."

Then the magisterium of Jimmy gets rolling:

The carefully selected verses found in the Holy Scriptures to justify the superiority of men owe more to time and place - and the determination of male leaders to hold onto their influence - than eternal truths. Similar biblical excerpts could be found to support the approval of slavery and the timid acquiescence to oppressive rulers.

I am also familiar with vivid descriptions in the same Scriptures in which women are revered as pre-eminent leaders. During the years of the early Christian church women served as deacons, priests, bishops, apostles, teachers and prophets. It wasn't until the fourth century that dominant Christian leaders, all men, twisted and distorted Holy Scriptures to perpetuate their ascendant positions within the religious hierarchy.

And a prophetic warning against those that refuse to bow before JC's de fide interpretation of all the world's religious texts - repent or face secular prosecution in the future.

The truth is that male religious leaders have had - and still have - an option to interpret holy teachings either to exalt or subjugate women. They have, for their own selfish ends, overwhelmingly chosen the latter. Their continuing choice provides the foundation or justification for much of the pervasive persecution and abuse of women throughout the world. This is in clear violation not just of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights but also the teachings of Jesus Christ, the Apostle Paul, Moses and the prophets, Muhammad, and founders of other great religions - all of whom have called for proper and equitable treatment of all the children of God. It is time we had the courage to challenge these views.

Not bad, Jimmy. You've managed to depict your former neighbors and co-religionists as greedy, selfish bigots, but you've managed to win some credit from liberal elites in England, which is where this conversion story was published.

"Truer words have never been babbled."

James Lileks explains that we should be thanking Joe Biden for his "gaffes" - they reveal to us what the administration is really thinking.

Coming Soon to an America Near You!

Canadian Human Rights Commission files complaint against Catholic bishop for refusing to allow homosexual to serve as altar server.

TORONTO, July 10, 2009 - The Catholic Civil Rights League commented today on the filing of a complaint with the Ontario Human Rights Commission against the Bishop of Peterborough for discontinuing the service of two homosexual men as altar servers at a parish church in the diocese.

According to a report published in the Catholic Register, Jim Corcoran brought the complaint after he was asked to give up his position as an altar server at Sunday Masses. Mr. Corcoran, who has acknowledged that he is homosexual, was relieved from those duties at St. Michael’s parish in Cobourg, Ontario.

Without commenting on any individual personnel situation or personalities that are involved in this case, the relationship between the Church and altar servers, in the League's opinion, has none of the attributes that would make it a subject for a complaint to the Ontario Human Rights Tribunal. No one serves on the altar as a right; it is at the discretion of the pastor, who in turn is at the service of his bishop. Mr. Corcoran’s role was not unlike that of other liturgical servers, who are part of the overall presentation of the Mass.

The decision about who can serve on the altar is a matter of Church governance. While the Church is subject to human rights law when it employs people in a commercial relationship, the same cannot be said about decisions involving who is a member, or how they can best serve.

Wintery Knight has a video of Senator Jim Demint denouncing the Democrat Hate Crime amendment to the Defense Appropriations Bill. Check out the section at 6 minutes and 30 seconds where Demint discusses a provision in the Bill that states that the new law would not allow prosecution "solely" on the basis of religious expressions.

That kind of whacko talk would never be tolerated in our Englightened Age

I just finished reading "Ten Books that Screwed Up the World" by Benjamin Wiker. It's great fun, which I recommend, a kind of "window into Dante's Hell by way of the Great Books."

Lists are fun, if they are a little off the wall, and they can be quite thought provoking. For example, a list like "Name the Ten Worst People in History" is easy for the first three or four spots. Let's see, there is Adolph Hitler, Genghis Khan, that jerk you worked with 15 years ago, and then it starts getting more difficult, and I'm not so sure about Genghis anymore.

Wiker's book plays the same game with the Great Books. Wiker justifies placing on his list Marx's "Communist Manifesto", Mill's "Utilitarianism", Darwin's "Descent of Man", Nietzsche's "Beyond Good and Evil", Lenin's "The State and Revolution", Margaret Sanger's "The Pivot of Civilization", Hitler's "Mein Kampf", Freud's "The Future of an Illusion", Margaret Mead's "Coming of Age in Samoa" and Kinsey's "Sexual Behavior in the American Male."

It's interesting that a good number of these books - i.e., Sanger, Hitler, Freud and Mead - come from a single decade, the 1920s. Wiker's book is also a useful reminder of how influential, and explicitly promoted, eugenics was in American intellectual circles prior to the 1950s. Reading the troika of Darwin, Sanger and Hitler, it is obvious how Hitler was not an aberration, and why Nazism could be accepted in its time as scientific and progressive. (We also forget how school textbooks would teach the merits of eugenics to students. I recall, when my interest in genetics developed in my pre-teens, reading the early 70s, books from the public library that had been written the 30s and contained eugenic tracts and lots of useful informaiton about the many, many races of humankind.)

Of course, that history - popular and widespread - has been suppressed. We don't talk about eugenics anymore and we don't keep track of who was a promoter of eugenics back when it was progressive and scientific.

In that regard, the Sanger book is very interesting. As Wiker pointed out, although Sanger started Planned Parenthood, PP does not mention Sanger's "The Pivot of Civilization." In "Pivot", Sanger embraces psuedo-scientific claptrap, racism and eugenics in the name of improving the human species through selective breeding. Obviously, it would be considered dirty pool - the genetic fallacy - to bring up the provenance of Planned Parenthood, so Sanger's less palatable thoughts are suppressed in the cause of making her a secular prophet.

But that was in the 1920s. That kind of pseudo-scientific nonsense and draconian social engineering is buried in history. No one would be so irresponsible as to let that kind of thing into the public policy discussions again.

Well, meet Obama's "Science Czar" - John Holdren" who advocated forced abortions and sterilizations to stave of "Famine 1985":

The Holdren book, titled Ecoscience and co-authored with Malthus enthusiasts Paul and Anne Ehrlich, weighs in at more than 1,000 pages. Of greatest importance to its discussion of how to limit the human population is its disregard for any ethical considerations.

Holdren (with the Ehrlichs) notes the existence of “moral objections to some proposals...especially to any kind of compulsion.” But his approach is completely amoral. He implies that compulsory population control is less preferable, because of some people's objections, but he argues repeatedly that it is sometimes necessary, and necessity trumps all ethical objections.

He writes:

Several coercive proposals deserve discussion, mainly because some countries may ultimately have to resort to them unless current trends in birth rates are rapidly reversed by other means. Some involuntary measures could be less repressive or discriminatory, in fact, than some of the socioeconomic measures suggested.

Holdren refers approvingly, for example, to Indira Gandhi's government for its then-recent attempt at a compulsory sterilization program:

India in the mid-1970s not only entertained the idea of compulsory sterilization, but moved toward implementing it...This decision was greeted with dismay abroad, but Indira Gandhi's government felt it had little other choice. There is too little time left to experiment further with educational programs and hope that social change will generate a spontaneous fertility decline, and most of the Indian population is too poor for direct economic pressures (especially penalties) to be effective.

When necessary, then, compulsory sterilization is justified. This attitude suffuses the following passage, in which the possibility of putting a “sterilant” into a population's drinking water is seriously discussed. Holdren and his co-authors do not recommend this particular method, but their objections to it are merely practical and health-related, not moral or stemming from any concern for human freedom:

Adding a sterilant to drinking water or staple foods is a suggestion that seems to horrify people more than most proposals for involuntary fertility control. Indeed, this would pose some very difficult political, legal, and social questions, to say nothing of the technical problems. No such sterilant exists today, nor does one appear to be under development. To be acceptable, such a substance would have to meet some rather stiff requirements: it must be uniformly effective, despite widely varying doses received by individuals, and despite varying degrees of fertility and sensitivity among individuals; it must be free of dangerous or unpleasant side effects; and it must have no effect on members of the oposite sex, children, old people, pets, or livestock...Again, there is no sign of such an agent on the horizon. And the risk of serious, unforeseen side effects would, in our opinion, militate against the use of any such agent, even though this plan has the advantage of avoiding the need for socioeconomic pressures that might tend to discriminate against particular groups or penalize children.

Even though they do not recommend it, note that Holdren and his co-authors treat this as a serious policy proposal with serious drawbacks -- not as an insane idea unworthy of consideration.

They look with more favor on this “milder” form of coercive sterilization:

Of course, a government might require only implantation of the contraceptive capsule, leaving its removal to the individual's discretion but requiring reimplantation after childbirth. Since having a child would require positive action (removal of the capsule), many more births would be prevented than in the reverse situation.

Holdren and his co-authors also tackle the problem of illegitimacy, recognizing that it could be one consequence of a society which, in its effort to limit births, downgrades the value of intact nuclear families and encourages lifelong bachelorhood:

[R]esponsible parenthood ought to be encouraged and illegitimate childbearing could be strongly discouraged. One way to carry out this disapproval might be to insist that all illegitimate babies be put up for adoption -- especially those born to minors, who generally are not capable of caring properly for a child alone...It would even be possible to require pregnant single women to marry or have abortions, perhaps as an alternative to placement for adoption, depending on the society.

Holdren's suggestion here is presented perfectly in context. It stands alone in the text without any accompanying reservations.

President Obama has spoken repeatedly in favor of putting science before ideology. The real debate, however, has never been about whether ethics are needed in science, but rather over whose ethics should determine where science will or will not go.

Nowhere has Obama suggested that science should be completely ethics-free. But Holdren is his Science Czar all the same.

Notice the connection with Paul Ehrlich? If Wiken were to squeeze in another book on to his list, Ehrlich's false prophecy of doom and disaster - "The Population Bomb" - should make the list.

Remember, Palin was the "dumb" vice presidential candidate.

"Crazy Joe" Biden explains exonomics for the AARP:

Vice President Joe Biden told people attending an AARP town hall meeting that unless the Democrat-supported health care plan becomes law the nation will go bankrupt and that the only way to avoid that fate is for the government to spend more money.

“And folks look, AARP knows and the people with me here today know, the president knows, and I know, that the status quo is simply not acceptable,” Biden said at the event on Thursday in Alexandria, Va. “It’s totally unacceptable. And it’s completely unsustainable. Even if we wanted to keep it the way we have it now. It can’t do it financially.”

“We’re going to go bankrupt as a nation,” Biden said.

“Now, people when I say that look at me and say, ‘What are you talking about, Joe? You’re telling me we have to go spend money to keep from going bankrupt?’” Biden said. “The answer is yes, that's what I’m telling you.”

(emphasis added)

Because spending money to avoid bankruptcy makes obvious sense.

You think?

USA Today asks "Could we be wrong about global warming?

Could the best climate models -- the ones used to predict global warming -- all be wrong?

Maybe so, says a new study published online today in the journal Nature Geoscience. The report found that only about half of the warming that occurred during a natural climate change 55 million years ago can be explained by excess carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. What caused the remainder of the warming is a mystery.

"In a nutshell, theoretical models cannot explain what we observe in the geological record," says oceanographer Gerald Dickens, study co-author and professor of Earth Science at Rice University in Houston. "There appears to be something fundamentally wrong with the way temperature and carbon are linked in climate models."

During the warming period, known as the “Palaeocene-Eocene thermal maximum” (PETM), for unknown reasons, the amount of carbon in Earth's atmosphere rose rapidly. This makes the PETM one of the best ancient climate analogues for present-day Earth.

As the levels of carbon increased, global surface temperatures also rose dramatically during the PETM. Average temperatures worldwide rose by around 13 degrees in the relatively short geological span of about 10,000 years.

The conclusion, Dickens said, is that something other than carbon dioxide caused much of this ancient warming. "Some feedback loop or other processes that aren't accounted for in these models -- the same ones used by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change for current best estimates of 21st century warming -- caused a substantial portion of the warming that occurred during the PETM."

In their most recent assessment report in 2007, the IPCC predicted the Earth would warm by anywhere from 2 to 11 degrees by the end of the century due to increasing amounts of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere caused by human industrial activity.

The Global Warming Scare is starting to look like "Famine 1975."

Worth Watching

Interesting

Brian Griffits, aka Lord Griffiths of Fforestfach, trustee of the Archbishop of Canterbury’s Lambeth Trust and Vice-Chairman of Goldman Sachs International - and when he talks, everyone listens - offers this:

When Cardinal Ratzinger was elected Pope, his strengths and weaknesses seemed clear. Here was an eminent theologian, philosopher and guardian of Christian truth, but a man unlikely to make the Church’s message relevant to the world today. How simplistic this now looks in the light of his third encyclical, in which Pope Benedict XVI confronts head-on the financial crisis that has rocked the world.

The language may be dense, but the message is sufficiently rewarding. The encyclical analyses modern capitalism from an ethical and spiritual perspective as well as a technical one. As a result it makes the Government’s White Paper on financial reforms published two days later look embarrassingly one-dimensional and colourless.

It is highly critical of today’s global economy but always positive. Its major concern is how to promote human development in the context of justice and the common good. Despite heavy competition from some of the world’s finest minds, it is without doubt the most articulate, comprehensive and thoughtful response to the financial crisis that has yet appeared. It should strike a chord with all who wish to see modern capitalism serving broader human ends.

Maybe the Democrats use of the race card is past its "sell by" date.

When Barbara Boxer plays the race card on the head of the National Black Chamber of Commerce, he doesn't like it...and he doesn't think that race has anything to do with energy.

Bare, ruined choirs

N.T. Wright: The American Episcopal church is choosing schism.

The Heckler's Veto

What's Wrong With the World has this incredible video of Americans being denied their free speech rights at a Muslim street festival in Deerborn, Michigan.



The law is that the police must protect speakers from such "heckler's vetos."

Let's hope that in Multi-cultural America, the right to free speech isn't nuanced in favor of favored minorities.

The Hidden Agenda

It's interesting how the hidden agenda of abortion-rights - reducing the surplus welfare population - has been clumsily revealed by certain liberal women recently, as if they are forgetting that they are not having a private discussion in the Hamptons. So, we had the spectacle of Pelosi admitting that abortion has the benefit of reducing government costs by reducing the number of welfare dependents and now we have Justice Ginsberg opining:

As part of her broad-ranging discussion of abortion, Ginsburg offers this, er, interesting comment why the Court’s 1980 decision in Harris v. McRae, which ruled that the Hyde Amendment’s exclusion of nontherapeutic abortions from Medicaid reimbursement was constitutionally permissible, “surprised” her:

Frankly I had thought that at the time Roe was decided, there was concern about population growth and particularly growth in populations that we don’t want to have too many of. So that Roe was going to be then set up for Medicaid funding for abortion. Which some people felt would risk coercing women into having abortions when they didn’t really want them. But when the court decided McRae, the case came out the other way. And then I realized that my perception of it had been altogether wrong.

Well, of course that's what she thought. Didn't everyone?

As Kathyrn Jean Lopez points out, there is a long association of the left in America with eugenics. Also, we often forget that until World War II, eugenics was taught in American schools and in American text books as being a very good thing - very scientific and progressive. Undergirding this sentiment was the notion that there were too many of those kind of people who were a drain on social resources. After all, it was liberal icon Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. in the Buck v. Bell decision who opined:

“It is better for all the world, if instead of waiting to execute degenerate offspring for crime or to let them starve for their imbecility, society can prevent those who are manifestly unfit from continuing their kind...
Three generations of imbeciles are enough.”

Holmes' sentiments live on in Pelosi and Ginsburg's comments.

Samuel Greg at the Acton Powerblog offers his take on the new encyclical Caritas in Veritate:

Perhaps Caritas in Veritate’s most important truth-claim about economic life is that the market economy cannot be based on just any value-system. Against all relativists on the left and the right, Benedict maintains that market economies must be underpinned by commitments to particular basic moral goods and a certain vision of the human person if it is to serve rather than undermine humanity’s common good: “The economy needs ethics in order to function correctly — not any ethics whatsoever, but an ethics which is people-centred” (CV no.45)

“Without internal forms of solidarity and mutual trust,” the Pope writes, “the market cannot completely fulfill its proper economic function” (CV no. 35). This surely has been amply confirmed by the recent financial crisis. America’s subprime-mortgage market collapse was at least partly attributable to the fact that literally thousands of people lied on their mortgage application forms. Should we be surprised that mass violation of the moral prohibition against lying has devastating economic consequences? “The economic sphere”, the pope reminds us, “is neither ethically neutral, nor inherently inhuman and opposed to society. It is part and parcel of human activity and precisely because it is human, it must be structured and governed in an ethical manner” (CV no.36).

And:

Nor does Benedict regard the market as morally problematic in itself. “In and of itself,” the Pope states, “the market is not . . . the place where the strong subdue the weak. Society does not have to protect itself from the market, as if the development of the latter were ipso facto to entail the death of authentically human relations” (CV no.36). What matters, Benedict claims, is the moral culture in which markets exists.

At the heart of the economy are human persons. People whose minds are dominated by crassly hedonistic cultures will make crassly hedonistic economic choices. “Therefore”, Benedict comments, “it is not the instrument that must be called to account, but individuals” (CV no.36).

The implications of truth for economic life do not, however, stop here. For Benedict, it is a lens through which to assess ideas such as “business ethics”, “ethical investing” and “corporate social responsibility.” The notion that investment and business choices have a moral dimension is hardly new. What matters for Benedict is the understanding of morality underlying these schemes. Merely labeling an investment scheme as “ethical”, Benedict notes, hardly tells us whether it is moral (CV no.45).

This describes the libertarian conundrum: in order to have a workable system based on the freedom implicit in a free market - or a democracy - we have to have people who recognize ethical limits on that freedom.

Here is a link to Caritas in Veritate.

Economic malaise raises hope for melanin-deficient redheads

Economic malaise seems to be driving dating:

Credit the recession for staycations and bringing us more game-night parties at home. But also give it a shout for spurring more first dates.

Economic woes, it seems, unleash something practically primal in many of us who find ourselves without a partner: a hard-wired desire for companionship.

Some singles are now hunting for dates with the same fervor others are showing hunting for jobs. On matchmaking Web site eHarmony.com, membership is up 20 percent despite monthly fees of up to $60, and activity has soared 50 percent since September at OkCupid.com.

The Invisible Hand is at work - we're looking for bargains:

Still, Sam Yagan, the founder and CEO at OkCupid.com, sees the changing dating climate as a matter of dollars and cents.

The way he figures it, a man can spend $100 buying drinks at a bar trying to pick up a stranger and leave with little more than a cold shoulder. But, when he's in a relationship, a Saturday evening can be as simple as Thai noodle takeout, Netflix and some fun under the covers. All in all, Yagan said, that's "more bang for your buck."

It's more than just the recession. Experts say changes in behavior can relate to other world events - with upticks when news is bad.

And everyone is discounting:

A gentler tone is taking over, daters and observers say, with substance gaining over style.

For Mili Thomas, a 28-year-old graduate student in New York, that means she now spends time with men who didn't show up on her radar screen before the recession. Among them: a Ph.D. who would have been nixed because he lives in New Jersey and an employee at a marketing firm who wouldn't have made the grade because he is two years her junior.

"I figured this was the best possible time to explore other options since people's lives have been turned topsy turvy," she said. "I think everyone is more open to bucking convention given that 'the usual' has gone out the window."

1974 Detroit is coming back with a vengeance!

Nominalism

Craig wrote:

In a message dated 6/29/2009 5:19:42 P.M. Pacific Daylight Time, craigb@csufresno.edu writes:
Here's why I'm wondering. If God is defined as "being itself," which I take it is Aquinas position, and being is inherently good, then God, and the moral structure of the universe, would just be good, baring enemy action.

But if God is simply another entity in the universe among others, albeit the most powerful, then he takes up the position of being "boss" in a different way than in the Aquinas model, and so could change moral rules at will.

Seems like a fairly significant issue for natural law.

I'm sure I haven't stated the issue very well, but maybe someone can address that too.

PSB's response:

Here is my conclusion; you can follow my thinking below.

I think that you are right about a critical distinction between Nominalism and Scholasticism being whether God is just "another object in the world" versus being the ground of existence itself. Under Thomism, everything that exists, exists in a true relationship with God, i.e., things other than God "participate" in God's goodness and being because they exist because they are ordered to God's own goodness. Since there is such a relationship, things can be compared to God.

Nominalism does not teach that things are ordered to God. The existence of things says nothing about the nature of God. Things cannot be compared to God.

For things to be compared there must be some idea or word that encompasses the things to be compared. We can compare a large ball and a small ball, for example, but we can't compare the taste of an banana with the color blue because there is no idea or word that covers both experiences at the same time. For all practical purposes, the taste of a banana and the color blue might as well be in separate universes.

Repudiating universals would have the tendency of putting God into a "different universe" in terms of making a comparison between Creator and Created. If words just describe individual things, then we don't have the ability to compare Creator and Creation.

Remove the ability to make such a comparison of existence or goodness between Creator and Creature, then all that remains is God as a "boss."

Analysis:

Obviously, one of us is going to have to break down and read William of Ockham or Duns Scotus.

Until we do, though, here are some sketchy points that are not tightly reasoned.

According David Allen Gillespie, The Theological Origins of Modernity:

"Faith alone, Ockham argues, teaches us that God is omnipotent and that he can do anything that is possible, that is to say, everything that is not contradictory. thus, ever being exists only as a result of his willing it and it exists as it does and as long as it does only because he so wills it. Creation is thus an act of sheer grace and is comprehensible only through revelation. God creates the world and continues to act within it, bound neither by his own laws nor by his previous determinations. He acts simply and solely as he pleases and, and as Ockham often repeats, he is no man's debtor. There is thus no immutable order of nature or reason that man can understand and no knowledge of God except through revelation."

In the Thomistic scheme, God is pure being itself. “Pure being” implies a particular kind of thing, namely that God is “pure act” – or “total actualization” - which means that there is no “potentiality” in God. God does not have the potential to be anything other than what He is. He is, therefore, immutable. ST I, 9, 1.

First, because it was shown above that there is some first being, whom we call God; and that this first being must be pure act, without the admixture of any potentiality, for the reason that, absolutely, potentiality is posterior to act. Now everything which is in any way changed, is in some way in potentiality. Hence it is evident that it is impossible for God to be in any way changeable.

God’s immutability – His perfect actualization without the possibility of potentiality, or ability to change by getting better or worse – follows from His perfection ST I, 4 , 1:

Reply to Objection 3. Existence is the most perfect of all things, for it is compared to all things as that by which they are made actual; for nothing has actuality except so far as it exists. Hence existence is that which actuates all things, even their forms.

It seems that this idea of pure existence meaning “pure act” ties into the immutability of God’s will. ST I, 19, 7.

Now it has already been shown that both the substance of God and His knowledge are entirely unchangeable (9, 1; 14, 15). Therefore His will must be entirely unchangeable.

One of the conclusions that Thomas reached was that God necessarily wills His own good:

Hence God wills His own goodness necessarily, even as we will our own happiness necessarily, and as any other faculty has necessary relation to its proper and principal object, for instance the sight to color, since it tends to it by its own nature. But God wills things apart from Himself in so far as they are ordered to His own goodness as their end.

Now, that conclusion is clearly different than that which is ascribed to Ockham, who argued that God was not constrained by nothing – not even His own past determinations.

There is also a “jump” from God to the created world through God’s will.

God wills things other than Himself but those things are willed as part of God’s willing His own goodness. ST I, 19, 2:

I answer that, God wills not only Himself, but other things apart from Himself. This is clear from the comparison which we made above (Article 1). For natural things have a natural inclination not only towards their own proper good, to acquire it if not possessed, and, if possessed, to rest therein; but also to spread abroad their own good amongst others, so far as possible. Hence we see that every agent, in so far as it is perfect and in act, produces its like. It pertains, therefore, to the nature of the will to communicate as far as possible to others the good possessed; and especially does this pertain to the divine will, from which all perfection is derived in some kind of likeness. Hence, if natural things, in so far as they are perfect, communicate their good to others, much more does it appertain to the divine will to communicate by likeness its own good to others as much as possible. Thus, then, He wills both Himself to be, and other things to be; but Himself as the end, and other things as ordained to that end; inasmuch as it befits the divine goodness that other things should be partakers therein.

Hmmmm….also, it is the nature of God’s willing, rather than his mere existence, that allows creation to participate in God’s existence. Id.

Reply to Objection 1. The divine will is God's own existence essentially, yet they differ in aspect, according to the different ways of understanding them and expressing them, as is clear from what has already been said (13, 4). For when we say that God exists, no relation to any other object is implied, as we do imply when we say that God wills. Therefore, although He is not anything apart from Himself, yet He does will things apart from Himself.

So, let’s stop here for a moment. In Scholasticism, created things exist separately from God because they are ordered to God’s goodness in that God creates things as part of His willing His own good. In Nominalism, God has no such necessary purpose in willing things – He just does it.

This means that in Nominalism there is no real relationship between God’s “existence” and the objects of His will, as there is Scholasticism.

The idea of a relationship is essential to our belief that we can understand God by looking at His creation.

Being is convertible to Goodness (ST I, 5, 1) - because (a) for a thing to be good it must necessarily exist and (b) we know - pace Augustine - that evil is merely the absence of Good, evil having no ontological existence itself. We humans have a natural experience of goodness and being - which is merely a pale penumbra from God. Still, our natural experience of goodness and being is nonetheless a true experience of God.

This conclusion follows from the fact that all things desire their own perfection, which means that ultimately they desire God. ST I, 6, 1:

Reply to Objection 2. All things, by desiring their own perfection, desire God Himself, inasmuch as the perfections of all things are so many similitudes of the divine being; as appears from what is said above (Question 4, Article 3). And so of those things which desire God, some know Him as He is Himself, and this is proper to the rational creature; others know some participation of His goodness, and this belongs also to sensible knowledge; others have a natural desire without knowledge, as being directed to their ends by a higher intelligence.

All goodness participates in God's goodness, i.e., things are good to the extent that they resemble, more or less, God. However, if things "participate" in God's goodness or being, they "resemble" in some way God, and, therefore, we can discern something of God in examining created things.