The Telegraph reports that "Burma 'orders Christians to be wiped out.'" Note to self: Avoid Burma.
Tuesday, January 23, 2007
Travel advisory
Sullivan v. Harris on "moderate" religion
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.
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
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.
Friday, January 19, 2007
Catholics in America
An interesting homily by Archbishop Gomez (San Antonio) about being Catholic in America. Here is a taste:
long before the United States of America was even an idea, this land was Catholic. Holy Mass was celebrated here, at that time in Latin; The Word of God, was preached in the Spanish language, and both then are part of our country’s mother tongue.
Every American today, in some way traces his or her roots to the great Hispanic-Catholic missions of the 16th and 17th centuries. We feel this deeply here in the Southwest. In other parts of our country, Americans proudly trace their roots more deeply to the early Catholic missions of immigrants from other foreign lands, France, Poland, Germany, Ireland and Italy.
But we are all of us Americans, and most of us are children of immigrants. And all of us are heirs to the legacy of the Gospel believed and preached here by our country’s first settlers.
I fear today that we’re in danger of trying to deliberately, erase our memory of this history. It’s almost as if we are that unfaithful servant in the Gospel—who out of fear buries the gifts that God has given him.
I feel that sometimes in the same way that some people would have us forget our country’s Hispanic heritage, there are powerful forces at work that want us to forget our Catholic and Christian roots, too. You know this in your work. The reason we’re always fighting over Church-state and religious freedom issues in our courts and legislatures is that there are strong pressures to suppress and privatize religion.
Thanks to Amy Welborn.
Gracious!
Jonathan Liu reviews here Chris Hedges' new book, "American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War on America." Here is a bit:
Mr. Hedges gives the lie to the idea that religious moderates can fight back by simply providing an inclusive alternative to the literalists. He calls on them to denounce the very legitimacy of texts like Leviticus and especially the Book of Revelation, which anticipates a “dark conclusion to life … whether it is tucked into the back pew rack of a liberal Unitarian church in Boston or a megachurch in Florida.” Does Mr. Hedges believe that Revelation should be deleted from the New Testament altogether? If so, he has enough sense not to say so outright. Still, the criticism of “mainstream Protestant and Catholic churches, declining in numbers and influence,” anchors a book whose most pointed critiques are reserved not for the power-hungry preachers and Congressmen so much as the guardians—political, cultural and intellectual, as well as religious—of a civil society complicit in its own ongoing decimation.
“Most liberals,” Mr. Hedges warns, “will stand complacently to be sheared like sheep, attempting to open dialogues and reaching out to those who spit venom in their faces.” They succumb to “the pleasant fiction that [Christian] radicals are fundamentally decent, that they do not mean what they say …. Such passivity only accelerates the probability of evil.”
More of this, please
From Professor Friedman:
Congress Imposes Sanctions On Belarus For Denying Religious Freedom
President Bush, last Friday, signed H.R. 5948, the Belarus Democracy Reauthorization Act of 2006. Part of the new law imposes various sanctions on Belarus until it makes significant progress in meeting a long list of desired democratic reforms. Among the conditions imposed are the release of individuals in Belarus who have been jailed based on their religious beliefs and the cessation of all forms of harassment and repression against religious organizations. The initial Findings in H.R. 5948, conclude in part: "The Lukashenka regime has increasingly subjected leaders and members of minority and unregistered religious communities to harassment, including the imposition of heavy fines, denying permission to meet for religious services, prosecutions, and jail terms for activities in the practice of their faith."
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