Sam Harris thinks that religious believers are, necessarily, extremists and that that those who imagine themselves to be religious "moderates" are kidding themselves, and enabling evil. Andrew Sullivan disagrees. Here's the debate.
Tuesday, January 23, 2007
Sullivan v. Harris on "moderate" religion
India to Catholic parish: No masses for you!
Here's one way to deal with intra-parish squabbles about liturgy:
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Monday, January 22, 2007
Focus on the disease (not the "sexually transmitted")
Daniel Conway, a physician and professor of medicine at Drexel, emailed this response to my skepticism about the proposed mandatory STD vaccinations for sixth graders:
[P]rotective claims of "maintaining innocence" make me roll my eyes. Since somewhere distant in this evaulation, this issue involves "sex," the culture warriors fly into fits. The "sex" part of "sexually transmitted disease" is so much more provocative for culture warriors than the "disease" part of "sexually transmitted." And as such prompts the typical and expected reaction.
Pap smears, done on every woman, detect cervical cancer. Caused by this virus, the papilloma virus, for which the vaccine Gardasil provides protection. So every woman who gets a Pap smear is suspected of having a sexually transmitted disease. In fact, the pursuit of sexually transmitted diseases is maybe 95% of the laboratory evaluations of the routine gyneocologic visit and a routine aspect of the evaluation of the pregnant woman. Over and over again. To be married in Pennsylvania, a syphilis test had been required until recently. Syphilis evaluations, gonococcal testing, chlamydial testing, HIV testing are the routine prenatal evaluations.
So why the drama about this vaccine? The age of the recipient? And the "sex" part of the STD?
Who knows what goes on behind closed doors? In the suburbs. In middle America. Who is getting abused by her stepfather or mother's boyfriend? Sexually transmitted diseases are epidemic. Public health determinations demand that everyone be considered at risk for these diseases. (And considering the poll numbers that reveal the degree of infidelity within a marriage, I would agree. Everyone is at risk.) Vaccinate.
Another book of interest
Joseph Peace, "Small Is Still Beautiful: Economics as if Families Mattered." Here is the Amazon link; here is an interview with Pearce about the book. Very interesting. I read, and was really hit by, "Small Is Beautiful," but I had forgotten (if I ever knew) that E.F. Schumacher was a public supporter of Humanae vitae.
Also, here is a blog dedicated to a discussion of the book. And, here is Rod Dreher, at Crunchy Cons, on the book (he's a fan.)
"Til We Have Built Jerusalem"
Professor Philip Bess's book, "Til We Have Built Jerusalem", is out and available. Buy it now for the natural-law theorist, new urbanist, or lover of spaces beautiful and human on your list. Here is a blurb:
“The city comes into existence . . . for the sake of the good life.” So wrote Aristotle nearly 2,400 years ago, articulating an idea that prevailed throughout most of Western culture and the world until the environmental consequences of the Industrial Revolution called into question the goodness of traditional urban life. Urban history ever since—from England’s early-nineteenth-century hygiene laws to mid-twentieth-century modernist architecture and planning to today’s New Urbanism—has consisted of efforts to ameliorate the consequences of the industrial city by either embracing or challenging the idealization of nature that has followed it.
Architect Philip Bess’s Till We Have Built Jerusalem puts forth fresh arguments for traditional architecture and urbanism, their relationship to human flourishing, and the kind of culture required to create and sustain traditional towns and city neighborhoods. Bess not only dissects the questionable intellectual assumptions of contemporary architecture, he also shows how the individualist ethos of modern societies finds physical expression in contemporary suburban sprawl, making traditional urbanism difficult to sustain. He concludes by considering the role of both the natural law tradition and communal religion in providing intellectual and spiritual depth to contemporary attempts to build new—and revive existing—traditional towns and cities, attempts that, at their best, help fulfill our natural human desires for order, beauty, and community.
Still more on Romney and Religion
My friend and colleague, and rising-star political scientist, David Campbell, has an op-ed in today's isssue of USA Today on the issue of Romney and Religion. He writes:
Should Americans fear Mitt Romney because he is a Mormon? In spite of what some political pundits have recently argued, the answer is a resounding no.Should Romney fear how some Americans will react to his religion? Unfortunately, recent polls say yes. But just like another Massachusetts politician who faced questions about his religion, namely John F. Kennedy, Romney can, and should, tackle uneasiness about his religion head-on — sooner rather than later. . . .
It is true that, like many religious groups, the LDS church occasionally makes policy pronouncements, as it did last June in support of a federal constitutional amendment banning gay marriage. However, this kind of political activity has not served to constrain Mormon elected officials. Reid, at the time the Senate minority leader, led the opposition to the amendment. In response to a reporter's question about his open opposition to the LDS church's public position, his press secretary Sharyn Stein said that the church had asked members to express their opinions on the issue, so her boss was doing so "loudly and repeatedly on the Senate floor."
A President Romney would have the same autonomy to speak and act independently of his church. . . .
As I have suggested, my own view on this question is a little bit -- though not entirely -- different. Instead of taking Prof. Campbell's suggestion, and following President Kennedy in assuring leery Americans that "my church does not speak for me," I'd rather Romney (a) defend his policy views on the merits, and (b) educate Americans about what he believes, precisely as a Mormon, is the relationship between a political leader's religious views and his or her policies.
Roe v. Wade anniversary
Today is the 34th anniversary of the Supreme Court's decision in Roe v. Wade, a decision that -- as John Hart Ely put it -- "is not constitutional law and gives almost no sense of an obligation to try to be." (Or, as Senator Clinton put it two years ago, "a landmark decision that struck a blow for freedom and equality for women.") More than three decades later, Justice (and Democrat) Byron White's observations still hit home:
I find nothing in the language or history of the Constitution to support the Court's judgment. The Court simply fashions and announces a new constitutional right for pregnant mothers and, with scarcely any reason or authority for its action, invests that right with sufficient substance to override most existing state abortion statutes. The upshot is that the people and the legislatures of the 50 States are constitutionally disentitled to weigh the relative importance of the continued existence and development of the fetus, on the one hand, against a spectrum of possible impacts on the mother, on the other hand. As an exercise of raw judicial power, the Court perhaps has authority to do what it does today; but, in my view, its judgment is an improvident and extravagant exercise of the power of judicial review that the Constitution extends to this Court.
Here is a link, by the way, to the March for Life webpage. Here is the Bishops' statement on the 30th anniversary. Here is a statement by President Bush, proclaiming yesterday National Sanctity of Human Life day.
Our Lady of Guadalupe, patroness of the Americas and patroness of the unborn, pray for us.
UPDATE: Fr. Neuhaus has a long post, reflecting on Roe, here.
More on Prenatal Testing Guidelines
Another parent of a son with Down Syndrome, George Will, gives his perspective on the new recommendations of American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists that all pregnant women undergo prenatal testing for Down Syndrome. He starts:
What did Jon Will and the more than 350,000 American citizens like him do to tick off the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists? It seems to want to help eliminate from America almost all of a category of citizens, a category that includes Jon.
He ends:
Jon has a disability, but he also has some things most men would like to have—season tickets for Nationals and Orioles baseball, Redskins football, Capitals hockey and Georgetown University basketball. He gets to and from games (and to his work three days a week for the Nationals at RFK Stadium) by himself, taking public transportation to and from his apartment.
Jon experiences life's three elemental enjoyments—loving, being loved and ESPN. For Jon, as for most normal American males, the rest of life is details.
And there's a lot of good stuff in between, too.
Post-Abortion Syndrome
This week's NY Times Magazine has a must-read cover story, "Is There a Post-Abortion Syndrome?" There is much to discuss, including this:
While national groups like Focus on the Family, the National Right to Life Committee and Concerned Women for America warn about the dire effects of abortion on their Web sites and link to counseling ministries like Rachel’s Vineyard, they don’t finance abortion-recovery counseling. In part, that may be because the government and the Catholic Church do. But the lack of money may also reflect the strain of skepticism that [C. Everett] Koop voiced. Francis Beckwith, a professor of church-state studies at Baylor University who is anti-abortion, has criticized abortion-recovery activists for their “questionable interpretation of social-science data” and for potentially undermining the absolutist moral argument against abortion. “For every woman who has suffered trauma as a result of an abortion, I bet you could find half a dozen who would say it was the best decision they ever made,” he told me. “And in any case, suffering isn’t the same as immorality.” Beckwith speaks at churches and colleges, and he says that most anti-abortion leaders don’t want the woman-protective argument to supersede the traditional fetus-centered focus, “because that’s where the real moral force is.”
Cracking Down on Spanking
I don't spank my kids, but I also don't think that my friends and relatives who do occasionally spank their kids are criminals. Someone needs to introduce California Assemblywoman Sally Lieber to the principle of subsidiarity. (HT: Jonathan Watson)
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