Here, over at Beliefnet, is Rod Dreher's new "Crunchy Conservativism" blog.
Friday, May 19, 2006
New "Crunchy Con" blog
Evangelist, heal thyself
A conference on religious conversion organized by the Vatican and the World Council of Churches has issued a report (HT: Religion Clause) concluding that:
We affirm that while everyone has a right to invite others to an understanding of their faith, it should not be exercised by violating other’s rights and religious sensibilities. At the same time, all should heal themselves from the obsession of converting others.
I'm no fan of many tactics used for conversion. That said, I'm not sure what "religious sensibilities" are, or what constitutes a violation of them. I'm also a bit sketchy as to when a call to implement the Great Commission crosses the line into an "obsession" for which healing is appropriate. Was St. Paul obsessed with converting others?
Rob
. . . and easier to administer
While it's not difficult to garner popular support (at least in Georgia) for teaching the Bible in school, it gets a bit trickier when the time comes to choose a text.
Rob
Making secularism look better every day . . .
Via Amy Welborn, disturbing news from Iran:
Human rights groups are raising alarms over a new law passed by the Iranian parliament that would require the country's Jews and Christians to wear coloured badges to identify them and other religious minorities as non-Muslims.
Between mandatory badges and cartoon-driven violence, the naked public square can seem fairly inviting.
Rob
Immigration, National Security and a United World
Following some of the coverage of the recent immigration debates, I have been struck by how the emphasis on the importance of punishing “lawbreakers” often does not consider the harsh circumstances which bring people to immigrate; and by how the conversations often focus exclusively on what is good for the US economy. Conversations rarely open out into broader responsibility for the economic and political pressures that push families to leave their own countries. I have posted at the side a brief essay I wrote last year for Living City Magazine after Fordham's February 2005 conference, “Strangers No Longer: Immigration Law & Policy in the Light of Religious Values.” It works with the invitation to conversion, solidarity, and communion as articulated in his John Paul II’s 1999 Letter to the Church in America and other documents. The papers from the conference will be published in a forthcoming “Law & Religion” volume of the Detroit-Mercy Law Review, and will include Michael Scaperlanda's keynote. Amy
Thursday, May 18, 2006
Churches in Trusts
The bishop of Vermont has placed local parishes in charitable trusts, apparently in order to protect them from sex abuse settlements. I lack the expertise to know if this is a prudent -- or even a novel -- maneuver; Voice of the Faithful called it "fraudulent, deceitful, and irresponsible."
Rob
Church Rebounds
The New York Times reports:
A new study has found that the scandal over sexual abuse in the Roman Catholic Church has not caused American Catholics to leave the church, or to stop attending Mass and donating to their parishes.
Rob
Acton's Power Blog
The Acton Institute ("The Mission of the Acton Institute is to promote a free and virtuous society characterized by individual liberty and sustained by religious principles.") has a blog, "Power Blog," that is up and running. Check it out. This post, about D. Bonhoeffer and the "mandate of the state", caught my eye.
Wednesday, May 17, 2006
Breaking the bargain
Fr. Richard John Neuhaus was in Philadelphia today to give the St. Thomas More Society's annual Gest Forum lecture. The lecture was high Neuhaus style, with consequent effect: Many came away wishing they were capable of offering such courageous witness to the Catholic faith. On the train ride home I was pondering how the laicized state has failed to uphold its part of the modern bargain. The Church blessed the state's emerging as an independent instrument, rather than a sacral achievement under the watch of the Church, on the promise that the state would protect and reflect a true anthropology of the person, including the person's intrinsically social nature. The toothpaste has left the tube, and now the very idea of the state's giving effect to an understanding of what is truly good for humans is drummed out of court. Neuhaus's response to the problem, as offered today to a rapt audience of lawyers: People of good faith must press on in every possible and attrative way to hold government responsible to the natural law.
"Religion Must End"
Here, thanks to Beliefnet, is an interesting and provocative interview with Sam Harris, the rock-star-atheist du jour.
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