An MoJ reader notes that the story of Carmen Bojorge (which I posted earlier) has appeared in many other news venues. Given the lack of clear evidence of a direct connection between the abortion ban and the woman's death, he wonders "if it is more about some pro-abortion groups faxing out press statements and getting the media outlets to bite." Be sure to check out The Revealer's critique of the Washington Post's article on her death.
Wednesday, November 29, 2006
Coverage of a Tragic Death: Reporting or Advocacy?
Tuesday, November 28, 2006
GOSH!!!
And I thought "Napoleon Dynamite" was about the age-old question: "Do chickens have large talons?"
The Anthropological Claims of Napoleon Dynamite
Over at Touchstone, Michael Bailey explores the deeper meaning of the wildly popular movie, Napoleon Dynamite, calling it a "humorous but touching critique of the inevitable loneliness and meaninglessness of individualism when it is stripped of the context of genuine community. Its message is consistent with a Christian moral anthropology, that human beings are not intended to 'fly solo,' but made to live in a community marked by the vulnerability and sacrifice of love."
Nicaragua's Abortion Ban
The Boston Globe reports on Nicaragua's no-exceptions abortion ban:
[18 year-old Carmen] Bojorge was awaiting her second child when she and her 5-month-old fetus died this month in a public hospital in Managua. Bojorge's family says they took her to a hospital when she complained of limb pains and weakness. When her condition worsened, doctors say they determined her fetus was dead, but Bojorge went into shock before they could save her.
"Now there is a dead woman, an orphaned son, a destroyed family, and this will not be the only case," prosecutor Débora Grandison told the Nicaraguan newspaper El Nuevo Diario. Grandison said outlawing therapeutic abortions was "condemning women to death."
The mother of the deceased teen doesn't understand the logic behind the law . If the doctors realized that fetal distress was putting the mother in danger, said Rosa Argentina Rodríguez Bojorge, "They could've at least saved my daughter so she could take care of her other child."
If negligence is proved, the Bojorge case "is a big warning that doctors are going to interpret the wording of the law very literally," said Azahalea Solís Román, a lawyer at the Center for Constitutional Rights in Nicaragua. The center will appeal to the Nicaraguan human rights council and the Supreme Court, arguing that the law violates a women's right to life.
Wilfredo Navarro, a national assemblyman who supported the ban, accused abortion activists and doctors of fueling an unwarranted scare as part of a campaign to overturn the law. "There's no going back. If doctors are going to kill babies, they can only do it outside of Nicaragua," he said.
Jean Raber has more thoughts on the case over at Commonweal.
No "Nativity" at Chicago Christmas Festival
By DON BABWIN
The Associated Press
Monday, November 27, 2006; 11:24 PM
CHICAGO -- A public Christmas festival is no place for the Christmas story, the city says. Officials have asked organizers of a downtown Christmas festival, the German Christkindlmarket, to reconsider using a movie studio as a sponsor because it is worried ads for its film "The Nativity Story" might offend non-Christians.
New Line Cinema, which said it was dropped, had planned to play a loop of the new film on televisions at the event. The decision had both the studio and a prominent Christian group shaking their heads.
"The last time I checked, the first six letters of Christmas still spell out Christ," said Paul Braoudakis, spokesman for the Barrington, Ill.-based Willow Creek Association, a group of more than 11,000 churches of various denominations. "It's tantamount to celebrating Lincoln's birthday without talking about Abraham Lincoln." ...
Monday, November 27, 2006
Forum 18
MoJ readers might be interested in Forum 18, a Christian website based in Norway and devoted to publicizing breaches of religious freedom around the world. (The name comes from Article 18 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.)
Weigel on the Pope's Turkey visit
A good piece, in Newsweek, on -- among other things -- religious freedom in Turkey:
. . . Although the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople does not exercise the jurisdictional and doctrinal authority in world Orthodoxy that the papacy exercises in world Catholicism, it does enjoy a historic status as "first among equals" in Orthodoxy, plays an important role in coordinating Orthodox affairs globally and is regarded as the spiritual center of global Orthodoxy by Orthodox believers. Yet it is Turkish law, not the canons of the Orthodox Church, that determines who is eligible to be elected ecumenical patriarch, and Turkish law limits the pool of possible candidates to Turkish citizens living in Turkey. As a recent memorandum from the Ecumenical Patriarchate put it, "the result of these restrictions is that in the not so distant future the Ecumenical Patriarchate may not be able to elect a Patriarch."
The Turkish government closed the patriarchate's seminary, the Theological School of Halki, in 1971, and has refused, despite numerous requests, to reopen it.
Turkey will not grant the Ecumenical Patriarchate legal "personality," in defiance of the Lausanne Treaty of 1923, which defined the legal position of minorities in Turkey; this refusal to deal with the patriarchate as a legal "person" (as churches are regarded throughout the West) is, according to the patriarchate memo, "a major source of many other problems." For to deny that the patriarchate is a legal entity with certain rights, an entity that can work with the Turkish government within the framework of the law, means that all issues between the patriarchate and the state become political issues, subject to political pressures and counterpressures—especially problematic, since less than one tenth of 1 percent of the Turkish population is Orthodox. . . .
No Christian community in the West would tolerate such conditions, which involve violations of basic human rights. If Turkey is to be the model of a modern Islamic society, it must remove restrictions on the exercise of some of the most fundamental aspects of religious freedom: the freedom of religious communities to educate their people, perform works of charity and choose their leaders according to their own theological self-understanding. Might Benedict XVI's pilgrimage to Turkey focus the world's attention on the stranglehold the Turkish state attempts to exercise on Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew and his people, such that that stranglehold begins to ease? If the 79-year-old pontiff managed that, Christian unity and the dialogue between the West and Islam would both be advanced.
Modernity: Yearning for the Infinite
If you are going to be around South Bend this weekend, don't miss the Center for Ethics & Culture's Fall Conference, "Modernity: Yearning for the Infinite." (For that matter, get to South Bend for it!) Here is the conference schedule.
A few (very few) highlights: Professor Alasdair MacIntyre is deliving the conference keynote on Thursday night. Note also that Steve Smith -- whose recent book, Law's Quandary -- has been discussed here often is delivering a paper on Friday morning. Richard Stith is presenting "Realists, Madmen, and the Death of Law" on Saturday. And, MOJ's own Rob Vischer is presenting "Rescuing the Relational Dimension of Conscience" on Friday afternoon. And so much more . . .
Friedman's greatest legacy
Mark makes the strong case here that the anti-corporate-social-responsibility argument should not be our focus as we remember Milton Friedman's contributions. What about school choice? Check out this op-ed, "Friedman's Greatest Legacy," here.
Levinson on Religion and Politics
Sandy Levinson has this post, "Religion and Politics," over at Balkinization. Commenting on the role played by religious faith -- and, more specifically, by churches -- in the civil-rights movement, Levinson writes:
Political liberals and secularists, like myself, have to wrestle with the meaning of this aspect of the Civil Rights Movement. Because of the "culture wars" . . . , many, perhaps most, political liberal-secularists have been busy denouncing the role played by religion in American politics. But consider that the Catholic Bishops, who have, from my perspective, unfortunately concentrated their energies on the issues of abortion and same-sex marriage, have also engaged in eloquent criticism of American actions in the Iraq War, and the National Conference of Catholic Bishops is among the most important groups that still support the idea of a vigorous welfare state. One could obviously present other examples, including the attempts of Jim Wallis and others to present a more politically progressive version of Evangelical politics.
This is not a question of learning to talk about "values" or professing one's own religiosity. I remain a thoroughly secular Jew, with the operative word, when all is said and done, being the adjective. Rather, it is how "we" who have no religious "faith" manifest our respect for and make alliances with those who do have very deep religious commitments and are, as with King, quite literally willing to put their lives on the line in behalf of the most fundamental values of instantiating "equal concern and respect" even for those who pick up our garbage.
Recent Posts
Categories
Monthly Archive
StatCounter
PageViews
Since February 19, 2008
