Allan Carlson reports on an interesting conference organized by the G.K. Chesterton Institute and held last weekend in Oxford, England. Carlson's report is well worth the read: here.
Tuesday, July 14, 2009
Distributivist ideas on the current economic crisis
Sotomayor Hearings
[I received this a little while ago.]
Thought this may be of interest to your readers…
As Judge
Sotomayor's confirmation hearings get under way today, Beliefnet bloggers Barry
Lynn and Jay Sekulow, the two leading voices of the church-and-state battle ARE
blogging opposing-viewpoints at their blog " Lynn
Judge
Sotomayor: Time for Tough Questions:
http://blog.beliefnet.com/lynnvsekulow/2009/07/judge-sotomayor-time-for-tough.html
Good
Questions: Yes; Pontifications and Disruptions: No
http://blog.beliefnet.com/lynnvsekulow/2009/07/good-questions-yes-pontificati.html#more
Monday, July 13, 2009
Reply to Rick G.
Reply to what? This.
Jab? Jab?! I don't do no stinking jabs!
(Any "Treasure of the Sierra Madre" fans out there? Rick?)
Disorientation
I am very disoriented, after reading Michael S.'s post, immediately preceding.
$1,000,000 to the first MOJ blogger or reader who can explain why (i.e., other than Rick Garnett).
:-) ;-) :-) ;-) :-) !!!!!
Pro Ecclesia et Pontifice award winner nominated for Surgeon General Post
From Whisper in the Loggia:
...the President drew further from the US church's diverse ranks this morning with the nomination of his Surgeon General -- this time, an African-American Catholic.
Founder of a rural Alabama health clinic for the poor that was devastated three times (twice by hurricanes, once by fire) since its founding in 1990, Dr Regina Benjamin was reelected to a second term on the board of the US' Catholic Health Association at its yearly assembly last month in New Orleans. Even more notably, though, Benjamin's work both at home and nationally were recognized in 2006 when Pope Benedict awarded her the papal cross Pro Ecclesia et Pontifice ("For the Church and the Pontiff") -- the Roman accolade reserved for laity, religious and permanent deacons who've given distinguished service to the church.
The first African-American woman to lead a state medical association, the 53 year-old nominee -- whose grandmother helped found a Black Catholic parish, its first Masses offered in her living room -- must be confirmed by the Senate before she can become the nation's "top doc." ...
An MOJ reader from Europe on "Caritas in Veritate"
This from Pasquale Annicchino:
A Progressive-Conservative Pope?
Prof. Scarpelanda posted the article authored by Ross Douthat on Caritas in Veritate and published by the New York Times.
According to Douthat: “Benedict’s encyclical is nothing if not political.
“Caritas in Veritate” promotes a vision of economic solidarity rooted in moral
conservatism (...)It represents a kind of left-right fusionism with little
traction in American politics” and that: “For liberals and conservatives alike,
“Caritas in Veritate” is an invitation to think anew about their alliances”.
While it is true that
Caritas in Veritate hardly fits
within the liberal/conservative categories of American politics, the European
laboratory may introduce some surprises in the debate.
A careful reading of
the new philosophical theorization (Progressive-Conservatism) advanced by Phillip Blond for the Tories in the U.K. may reframe the debate.
David Cameron synthesized Blond’s Progressive
Conservatism with the motto: “Conservative
means for Progressive ends”.
Is it something similar to what Benedict XVI
is proposing?
Interestingly enough
in December 2008 Blond advanced his ideas for a “Catholic economy”. The video is available on Youtube.
Do the “new
alliances” have a kind of European flavour?
Blond also wrote for
the NYTimes (February 2008)
See also
the recent article published by Blond on “The Independent”: Without
a concept of virtue our politics and our
banks are doomed.
Pasquale Annicchino
Junior Fellow Law and Religion Programme, Siena
Now, Notre Dame's Fr. Richard McBrien weighs in ...
In his column today for NCR, "Women religious leadership conference has been faithful to its mission," here. An excerpt:
[I am amazed] that there could be any "doctrinal" concerns about the organization and its leadership.
Some of the finest women religious in the United States, and worldwide, have headed the Leadership Conference. By identifying only a sample, I do not mean to imply that those sisters who remain unmentioned are (or were) of lesser quality and achievement.
The list of past national chairpersons and presidents of the Leadership Conference reads like a Hall of Fame of religious life: Mary Luke Tobin, Thomas Aquinas (Elizabeth) Carroll, Margaret Brennan, Francis Borgia Rothleubber, Joan Chittister, Mary Dooley, Theresa Kane, Nadine Foley, Doris Gottemoeller, Camille D'Arienzo, and so many others.
Moreover, the Leadership Conference's mission statement is as straightforward in its pastoral and doctrinal purposes as it could possibly be: "to promote a developing understanding and living of religious life by: assisting its members personally and communally to carry out more collabora-tively their service of leadership in order to accomplish further the mission of Christ in today's world; fostering dialogue and collaboration among religious congregations within the church and in the larger society; [and] developing models for initiating and strengthening relationships with groups concerned with the needs of society, thereby maximizing the potential of the conference for effecting change."
But there are certain key words and phrases, like "developing," "dialogue," "collaboration," "change," and "today's world," that are red flags for some church officials and a minority of women religious who are locked into the religious culture of the 1940s and 1950s, when nuns wore elaborate habits, remained for the most part confined to their convents and religious houses, took the names assigned to them, often those of male saints, and limited their apostolic activity principally to teaching children, and ministering to the sick, orphans, and unmarried pregnant girls.
It was unthinkable in those pre-conciliar years for a nun to appear in secular clothes, however simple, to engage in apostolic activities outside the convent or religious house, to reclaim their baptismal names, and to become engaged in ministries of social justice, human rights, and peace.
It was even more unthinkable that these now highly educated women would begin to think for themselves and to speak and act accordingly.
That is what seems to bother their critics the most.
Is there an echo in here?
In yesterday's NYT:
What the Sisters Are Up To
Across 30 years, the modern version of the Sisters of St. Joseph has been revolutionizing the treatment of imprisoned women in New York. Thanks to the nuns’ efforts, mothers are now allowed to care for their infants on the inside and remain close to their children in creative visitors’ programs. Once they are paroled, these women and their children can find a year’s shelter in one of nine Providence House sanctuaries the nuns created in defunct city rectories and convents.
The order has never lacked courage: five members were guillotined in the French Revolution for giving shelter to the hunted. Now it is the bewildered community of American nuns that is the subject of two sweeping Vatican investigations. The question is whether the sisters are “living in fidelity” to the religious life — a question being put to nuns in no other nation.
Vatican investigations called “visitations” usually focus on serious flaws like the pedophilia scandal. So, what are nuns doing wrong? That is the question being asked by the sisters and legions of Catholic laypeople.
“Well, it’s all nonsense,” says Bob Bennett, a lawyer who led the church’s lay inquiry into the priest pedophilia scandal — which, he says, the church has still not fully addressed. He is amazed that American nuns, of all good people, are suddenly being scrutinized. “They are the jewels, the church’s class act,” he says.
The sisters won’t talk publicly about fears that the Vatican’s goal is to push them back toward a more submissive veil-and-wimple past. At the Providence House programs last week, they talked instead about the myriad problems of their ex-con mothers trying to get a grip on life. As ever, the nuns labor at the brink, begging alms to keep their mission going. “Look, none of us are marching to get women ordained,” one sister said in putting down the cliché that they seek to undermine Rome.
Tom Fox, editor of The National Catholic Reporter, suspects the inquiries are steeped in patriarchy and male chauvinism. “Next time, let’s have our women religious study the quality of life of our male clerics,” is Mr. Fox’s advice.
"The Audacity of the Pope"
Yesterday’s New York Times ran a thought provoking op-ed by Ross Douthat on Caritas in Veritate and the need for political re-imagination. Here are parts of it:
Papal encyclicals are supposed to be written with one eye on two millenniums of Catholic teaching, and the other on eternity. But Americans, as a rule, have rather narrower horizons. As soon as the media have finished scanning a Vatican document for references to sex, the debate begins in earnest: Is it good for the left, or for the right? For Democrats, or for Republicans?
* * *
Benedict’s encyclical is nothing if not political. “Caritas in Veritate” promotes a vision of economic solidarity rooted in moral conservatism. It links the dignity of labor to the sanctity of marriage. It praises the redistribution of wealth while emphasizing the importance of decentralized governance. It connects the despoiling of the environment to the mass destruction of human embryos.
This is not a message you’re likely to hear in Barack Obama’s next State of the Union, or in the Republican Party’s response. It represents a kind of left-right fusionism with little traction in American politics.
But that’s precisely what makes it so relevant and challenging — for Catholics and non-Catholics alike.
* * *
Catholics are obliged to take seriously the underlying provocation of the papal message — namely, that our present political alignments are not the only ones imaginable, and that truth may not be served by perfect ideological conformity.
So should all people of good will. For liberals and conservatives alike, “Caritas in Veritate” is an invitation to think anew about their alliances and litmus tests. ...
Any thoughts?
Sunday, July 12, 2009
Picking the Pope
In response to Michael's jab, a few things: First, with all due respect to Fr. McBrien, and notwithstanding the fact that Michael and I like many of the same books, Eamon Duffy's is a better history of the Popes.
Second, I (obviously) realize (as does Pope Benedict) that we have had some sub-optimal Popes and that it is (thankfully) not necessary for us to regard every Pope in history as having been specifically identified and imposed on the Church by the Holy Spirit. That said, I'm comfortably confident that the selection of this Pope -- even if he is not as much like Pres. Obama, or as responsive to the concerns of Kathleen Kennedy Townsend and her friends as she might like -- fits nicely within the Holy Spirit's promised-by-Christ guidance, protection, preservation, and inspiration of the Church.
Third, although I've learned from some other MOJ-ers to try to avoid the "surely you can agree that X" move, I'm happy to agree with my friend Michael that President Obama's speech -- even if it was, like every presidential speech, part of a political program (not that there's anything wrong with that) -- was an inspiring and hopeful one. Why shouldn't I? After all, I am not one of sorry sorts who is unable to recognize and praise the good that folks with whom I disagree do.
Recent Posts
Categories
Monthly Archive
StatCounter
PageViews
Since February 19, 2008
