Faith
On The Road Through Nothingness
It’s rare to see a positive story about the Catholic Church in the mainstream media, especially in newer online-only publications like Slate, but Harold Fickett, a Godspy contributing editor, managed to publish an essay there recently about the Clear Creek Monastery, a new and growing contemplative Benedictine monastery in Kansas, and the wider story of how Catholic religious communities are attracting young people. It could be that the critical success of the three-hour documentary, Into Great Silence, which had a long run at Manhattan’s Film Forum in 2007, left an impression on the editors. The appeal of that movie is captured in Harold’s ending: “From its rich liturgical rites to the pastoral details of its life as a working farm, as the monks raise sheep, make furniture, tend their orchard, and care for a huge vegetable garden, Clear Creek is what a monastery is meant to be—a sign of paradise. Father Anderson says, ‘We were only a bunch of bums, but by becoming nothing, you can be a part of something great.’" READ MORE >
Issues
Anglican bishops decry the ‘new creed’ of extreme capitalism
A trillion for the Iraq War, almost as much to rescue Wall Street, but basic health care for all is too expensive? Why aren't Christian leaders in the U.S. saying as much? In England it's a different story: "[T]he Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, warned in a magazine article that modern devotion to the free market is a form of idolatry and that Karl Marx was morally right in his analysis of the power of 'unbridled capitalism.' He believes that Marx's economic theories, as implemented by authoritarian state regimes, have proved equally wrong and harmful to unfettered market ideology, but that the protest against a greed-driven system is one that should be taken seriously." READ MORE >
World
Holy See Denounces Misuse of Protection Principle
The Vatican continues to take every opportunity to discourage preemptive war: "The use of violence to resolve disagreements is always a failure of vision and a failure of humanity. The responsibility to protect should not be viewed merely in terms of military intervention but primarily as the need for the international community to come together in the face of crises to find means for fair and open negotiations, support the moral force of law and search for the common good," Also see this statement. READ MORE >
Business
Behind AIG’s Fall, Blind Eye to a Web of Risk
Faith
Libertarian Heresy
You don't often find Commonweal hunting heretics. In the latest issue, Daniel Finn takes aim at Fr. Robert Sirico of the Acton Institute and other Catholics who force fit Catholic social teaching into free market ideology. Sirico, he says, "uses his tendentious view of law and morality to conclude that raising taxes to help others is unchristian, since citizens have no choice but to pay the tax... One wonders if this conviction hasn’t been engendered by a libertarian view of government actions, where such redistribution is always immoral." Commonweal isn't alone in recognizing this distortion of Church teaching, which has always recognized the authority of government to balance private property rights with the "universal destination of goods." There is a silent majority of orthodox Catholics who resent Acton and other Catholic think tanks that are so well-funded by wealthy pro-big business donors that they're able to drown out genuine Catholic social teaching. Finn thinks its time that "neoconservative Catholics inquire into the influence of libertarianism on their work and, most importantly, that they make Catholic moral theology the standard for judging right-wing claims about morality in economic life-and not the other way around." READ MORE >
Business
The Fleecing of America
Yes, greed fueled the crisis, but Cohen pinpoints what's unique about our penchant for financial manias: "...the U.S. economy is being socialized to the tune of $700 billion ($2,000 for every man, woman and child in the country) as a result of a giant mortgage-related Ponzi scheme... Let’s be clear: this is an American mess forged by the American genius for new-fangled financial instruments in an era where the mantra has been that government is dumb and the markets are smart and risk is non-existent." READ MORE >
Issues
Pope Benedict: Pius XII ‘spared no effort’ to help Jews during WWII
A symposium held in Rome confirmed the Church's position on Pope Pius XII: "'Thanks to the vast quantity of documented material which you have gathered, supported by many authoritative testimonies, your symposium offers to the public forum the possibility of knowing more fully what Pius XII achieved for the Jews persecuted by the Nazi and fascist regimes,'" Benedict said."'One understands, then, that wherever possible he spared no effort in intervening in their favor either directly or through instructions given to other individuals or to institutions of the Catholic Church." READ MORE >
Business
Greed and ruthless pursuit of profits to blame for banking fiasco
This article gets Catholic social teaching right, and exposes the fallacy that 9/11 restored us to moral clarity: "'Perhaps the most disturbing aspect of Lehman Brothers' fall is that it comes almost seven years to the day after 9/11... For all the talk of pulling together in the wake of the terrorist attacks that shook America to the core and supposedly set our priorities straight, Wall Street rushed headlong back to its mindless pursuit of profits and speculation without consideration for the consequences of its actions... At some point, society has to figure out that the way an investor earns his money is even more important than the amount of money he makes. This is why human beings were vested with moral sentiments, so they could distinguish the quality of human conduct from the quality of its results... It is incumbent upon the gatekeepers of capital ... to bring discipline to the system. This will require a rethinking of their priorities and a willingness to add to their investment calculus, considerations that exceed their own narrow interests about short-term investment returns.'" READ MORE >
Business
Ironic Speculation: Investment banks seek protection against short-selling
In an effort to slow panic selling, the SEC will try to force hedge funds to disclose their short selling positions. What's ironic is who's cheering the agency on: "Morgan Stanley and Goldman are the only two of the formerly five major Wall Street brokerages standing alone, and that is believed to have made them targets of speculators... Last week Lehman was the subject of a massive sell-off that eroded confidence in its business and sparked a funding crisis that ultimately led to its demise. 'It's very clear to me we're in the midst of a market controlled by fear and rumors, and short sellers are driving our stock down,' Morgan Stanley CEO John Mack said in a memorandum to employees Wednesday. 'You should know that the management committee and I are taking every step possible to stop this irresponsible action in the market.'" READ MORE >
Business
Credit Crunch: What Happens Next?
Politics
Obama’s Problem: Where’s the Change?
John McCain has criticized his own party's failures and gone against Republican orthodoxy. Has Barack Obama ever gone against his party's line? He "talks a lot about finding ways to move beyond the bloody battlegrounds of the 'culture wars' in America; the urgent need to establish consensus on the emotive issue of abortion," without ever making a concession to pro-lifers. "Politician Obama's support for abortion rights is the most extreme of any Democratic senator... The fact is that a vote for Mr Obama demands uncritical subservience to the irrational, anti-empirical proposition that the past holds no clues about the future, that promise is wholly detached from experience." READ MORE >
Life
The Mysterious Other: As Barriers Disappear, Some Gender Gaps Widen
Science/Tech
Tom Wolfe and a cognitive neuroscientist discuss status, free will, and the human condition
Faith
Benedict’s Discomforting Message
"Benedict directly challenged an assumption so many Americans make about religion: that it is a matter of private devotion with few public implications. Not true, said the pope. 'Any tendency to treat religion as a private matter must be resisted,' he told the country’s Catholic bishops Wednesday. 'Only when their faith permeates every aspect of their lives do Christians become truly open to the transforming power of the Gospel.' That is a demanding and unsettling standard for the right and the left alike... This is the thinking of a communitarian counseling against radical individualism... Perhaps it is the task of the leader of the Roman Catholic Church to bring discomfort to a people so thoroughly shaped by modernity, as we Americans are. If so, Benedict is succeeding." READ MORE >
Faith
The Puzzling Pope: Six Surprising Things About Benedict XVI
"The head of the CDF has to draw lines, level punishments and basically talk tough, a role that Ratzinger seemed to relish, but one that won him epithets like God's Rottweiller and the old standby, the Panzerkardinal. But now that Cardinal Ratzinger is Pope Benedict, he knows better than anyone that he is also the chief pastor of the church. There can be no 'Panzerpope.' His job is to be the good cop, a symbol of unity who tries to encourage people to live their faith more deeply. As he told a dinner companion about his new role: 'It was easy to know the doctrine. It’s much harder to help a billion people live it.'" READ MORE >
Issues
Hiroshima: Has the ground zero of the nuclear age become too ‘normal’?
...Hiroshima is still here to remind us of what happened when we first unleashed our "device" and how it can never happen again—supposedly. That's what everyone says after visiting Hiroshima, the statesmen and citizens who sign the guest book at the Hiroshima Peace Memorial. We will never forget. But maybe we will. The very fact that Hiroshima is thriving with its KFC and Starbucks, with the carefully manicured lawns of its 'Peace Memorial Park'—the only evidence that hell was unleashed here—may have the opposite, anodyne effect. This is not John Hersey's Hiroshima, the Hiroshima of the horrific immediate aftermath, but is to a certain extent a Hiroshima that says a nuclear detonation is a transient thing, something that's eminently recoverable from with a little time and some good landscaping." READ MORE >
World
Coptic priest Zakaria Botros fights fire with fire
“The very public conversion of high-profile Italian journalist Magdi Allam — who was baptized by Pope Benedict in Rome on Saturday — is only the tip of the iceberg. Indeed, Islamic cleric Ahmad al-Qatani stated on al-Jazeera TV a while back that some six million Muslims convert to Christianity annually, many of them persuaded by Botros’s public ministry… Many Western critics fail to appreciate that, to disempower radical Islam, something theocentric and spiritually satisfying — not secularism, democracy, capitalism, materialism, feminism, etc. — must be offered in its place. The truths of one religion can only be challenged and supplanted by the truths of another. And so Father Zakaria Botros has been fighting fire with fire.” READ MORE >
Issues
Latin Patriarch’s Easter Homily: Security Cannot Be Achieved by Inflicting Insecurity on Others
“For the people and for all our political leaders, the situation has become deadlocked, or still worse, a routine of death that the latter think they must only govern without ever giving it life. The recent events of these past few weeks, Gaza, the murder at the yeshiva in Jerusalem, the young people killed in Bethlehem, and many others, are no more than sterile repetitions of the events of all the past years. And we will not stop repeating that security cannot be achieved by inflicting insecurity on others. New means must be found…” READ MORE >
Faith
Pope Benedict XVI’s Address at the End of the Way of the Cross
"Dear friends: After having lived together the passion of Jesus, let us this night allow his sacrifice on the cross to question us. Let us permit him to challenge our human certainties. Let us open our hearts. Jesus is the truth that makes us free to love. Let us not be afraid: upon dying, the Lord destroyed sin and saved sinners, that is, all of us. The Apostle Peter writes: 'He himself bore our sins in his body upon the cross, so that, free from sin, we might live for righteousness' (1 Peter 2:24). This is the truth of Good Friday: On the cross, the Redeemer has made us adoptive sons of God who he created in his image and likeness. Let us remain, then, in adoration before the cross." READ MORE >
Faith
Good Friday is the Feast Day for Those Who Suffer
"'Jesus died in utter agony but also with total acceptance of the will of his Father: 'Father, into your hands I commend my spirit,' he said. Such trust and belief is hard to understand, but it lies at the heart of what faith is about.' ... Suffering and doubt is part of what it is to be human, but Jesus rising from the dead shows us that [it] is not the end of the story." ... But today it is enough to be humble and to share that sense of pain and desolation, wherever we know it to be and which many of us experience from time to time and pray that the darkness and despair will turn to hope and to light." READ MORE >
Faith
Through His Eyes: Stations of the Cross
For centuries... many stations were crowded with Roman soldiers and jeering or appalled onlookers, perhaps set against someone’s impression of first-century Jerusalem. Eric Gill’s 1918 stations, carved in shallow relief for Westminster Cathedral in London, pointed in a new direction. The figures were few and without background; the compositions were simple and formal, not theatrical. Rather than dictating an emotional response, the stone panels left space for the devotee’s own thoughts... Don Meserve, a fervent admirer of Gill, works within this contemporary current...'What strikes one from the outset is the absence of the figure of Christ — the perplexing absence of the protagonist himself.'” READ MORE >
Faith
Bearing the Silence of God: The image of Christ in the persecuted church
“…The greatest glory Jesus brought to God was not when he walked on the water or prayed for long hours, but when he cried in agony in the garden of Gethsemane and still continued to follow God's will, even though it meant isolation, darkness, and the silence of God. Thus, we know that when everything around us fails, when we are destroyed and abandoned, our tears, blood, and dead corpses are the greatest worship songs we have ever sung. The dead body is not the end of the story. The one who sacrificed his life is also the one who has been glorified: 'because we know that the one who raised the Lord Jesus from the dead will also raise us with Jesus and present us with you in his presence' (2 Cor. 4:14).” READ MORE >
Culture
The last rendezvous with Arthur C. Clarke
“…Clarke, who is credited in real life with being the first to come up with the idea of an ‘artificial satellite’ that could ‘broadcast to half the globe,’ was nothing if not prescient. Two years before I was born, he had already grasped the inevitable, unstoppable business model of on-demand-sex-flicks in the privacy of your own living room [and] I mean, come on -- in 1960, Clarke had already sketched out ‘Queer Eye for the Straight Guy.’ Were there no limits to his imagination!?” READ MORE >
Movies
Apocalypse Now?
"On a recent Saturday night, I went to the movies. Walking past the theater showing 'I Am Legend' (plague kills most of humanity), I opted to watch 'Cloverfield' (inexplicably angry alien destroys Manhattan) instead. After sitting through back-to-back previews for 'Hellboy II: The Golden Army' (ancient truce between Hell and Earth is revoked, resulting in mass destruction) and 'Doomsday' (lethal virus ravages England, a disease-ridden cinematic cousin to '28 Days Later' and 'Children of Men'), I found myself disturbed. The End of Days suddenly seemed imminent. Should I cancel my post-movie dinner reservation? What's with all this apocalyptic entertainment, I wondered, and what does it say about those of us who are filling the theater seats?"
READ MORE >
World
Bearing Witness
Bearing Witness: 5 Years of the Iraq War. A Photo Essay. READ MORE >
Faith
The Audacity to Hope (1990)
“It's easy to hope when there are evidences all around of how good God is. But to have the audacity to hope when that love is not evident—you don't know where that somewhere is that my grandmother sang about, or if there will ever be that brighter day—that is a true test of a Hannah-type faith. To take the one string you have left and to have the audacity to hope—make music and praise God on and with whatever it is you've got left, even though you can't see what God is going to do—that's the real word God will have us hear…” READ MORE >
Politics
Gloomy Conservatives:The right wing is properly blaming itself for the fix it’s in
“Why, I heard people ask again and again, had the [Christian] leaders not led? Why, if they had as much influence as everyone supposed they did, had they brought us still one more time to the point where everyone had to rehash the rights and the wrongs of voting for ‘the lesser of two evils’? …I have no doubt the leaders of the religious right will be unified in their opposition to this fall's Democratic candidate. I have grave doubts whether those same leaders will any time soon be able to offer credible credentials for positive endorsements of almost any kind.” READ MORE >
World
The Mideast’s epitaphs of death and the duty to remember
"I think it is our duty as Christians, whether lay people or clergymen, to have the courage to remember history under any latitude in order to promote reconciliation and build it on more solid foundations... I wish to remember what happened in the streets of Beirut in 1982 when Italy's Bersaglieri force arrived following the massacres in the Palestinian refugee camps of Sabra and Shatila. Colonel Franco Angioni, who was in command of our soldiers at the time, asked Shia Muslim and Phalangist Christian leaders to order their men not to go around armed in the area under Italian control. The leaders of the various factions refused. A few days later Angioni had a group of Phalangist militiamen arrested and disarmed. News about what happened spread immediately, especially in Shia and Sunni areas. 'Italian soldiers have arrested Phalangists, Christians,' Muslims said. 'They did it even though they too are Christian; these soldiers tell the truth; they don't want to disarm us to favour our adversaries.' After this episode, filled with tension and disbelief, Shia militiamen and Phalangists stopped showing their weapons in those parts of Beirut under Italian control. That early action kept the peace for some time..." READ MORE >
Issues
Catholic College Leaders Expect Pope to Deliver Stern Message
"School presidents insist that truth-seeking is part of their institutional purpose. 'Every university is committed to the pursuit of truth,' said Georgetown President John J. DeGioia, 'and we want to ensure that there is the opportunity for both academic freedom and for the free exchange of ideas and opinions across all issues.' But David Gibson, the author of a Benedict biography, said the pope will ask, 'If you're not going to be an authentically Catholic, orthodox institution, why should you exist?'" READ MORE >
Faith
An interview with Chris Hedges: “I don’t believe in atheists”
"…Not believing in sin is very dangerous. I think both the Christian right and the New Atheists in essence don't believe in their own sin, because they externalize evil. Evil is always something out there that can be eradicated. For the New Atheists, it's the irrational religious hordes. I mean, Sam Harris, at the end of his first book, asks us to consider a nuclear first strike on the Arab world. Both Hitchens and Harris defend the use of torture. Of course, they're great supporters of preemptive war, and I don't think this is accidental…" READ MORE >
Issues
The Wire’s War on the Drug War
"Jury nullification is American dissent, as old and as heralded as the 1735 trial of John Peter Zenger, who was acquitted of seditious libel against the royal governor of New York, and absent a government capable of repairing injustices, it is legitimate protest. If some few episodes of a television entertainment have caused others to reflect on the war zones we have created in our cities and the human beings stranded there, we ask that those people might also consider their conscience. And when the lawyers or the judge or your fellow jurors seek explanation, think for a moment on Bubbles or Bodie or Wallace. And remember that the lives being held in the balance aren't fictional." READ MORE >
Life
Recovering a Sense of Women’s Dignity
"During the late 20th century feminists had a golden opportunity -- not easily recreated -- to address women's needs in the world. As the decades passed, it became clear these women were too easily derailed by the "dream of power," too disdainful of God to reach ordinary folk, too fearful of acknowledging common sense, and too willing even to harm the vulnerable, notably through abortion. As a result, their organized influence waned tremendously. The longing for women's equality and dignity lives on, but more in the hearts of individual women than in a larger group likely more capable of demanding some of the structural changes women need." READ MORE >
Issues
Is abortion for sex selection on its way out?
"Two and a half billion people live in China or India. That's eight times the population of the United States and more than one-third of the world's total. But it's less than it would have been by hundreds of millions of people, thanks in part to two brutal practices: a Chinese limit of one child per family and widespread abortions of unborn Indian girls. Those practices may be on the way out..." READ MORE >
World
Admiral William Fox: The Man Between War and Peace
"...while Admiral Fallon's boss, President George W. Bush, regularly trash-talks his way to World War III and his administration casually casts Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as this century's Hitler (a crown it has awarded once before, to deadly effect), it's left to Fallon--and apparently Fallon alone--to argue that, as he told Al Jazeera last fall: 'This constant drumbeat of conflict . . . is not helpful and not useful. I expect that there will be no war, and that is what we ought to be working for. We ought to try to do our utmost to create different conditions.' What America needs, Fallon says, is a 'combination of strength and willingness to engage.'" READ MORE >
World
Rum & Coke: One-woman show explodes the myth of Castro’s Cuba
“The play was Carmen Peláez’ retort to the fascination with Che T-shirts, solidarity tours to Cuba and the endless praise of the revolution’s twin pillars of health and education… ‘The image is one of the defender of the oppressed and defender of just causes… People who understand the Cuban reality know it is not like that. It is not something they would want for themselves or their own country. Or, they are opportunists who use Cuba as a symbol knowing full well what is happening.’” READ MORE >
Science/Tech
Is John McCain reconsidering his Stem Cell position?
The moral issues at stake are far from simple, to be sure, but Senator McCain’s rationalization of embryo-destructive research is nonetheless simply wrong... In November 2007, two teams of researchers ... successfully transformed normal human skin cells into what appears to be the functional equivalent of embryonic stem cells, without the need for embryos... Asked by a voter in late January if the new advances might cause him to reconsider his stand on President Bush’s stem cell funding policy, Senator McCain replied, 'I have not changed my position yet.' It is time he did." READ MORE >
Faith
Trials of the Saints
“Catholics should welcome the Vatican’s insistence on increased rigor in its saint-making guidelines. The redoubled commitment to an impartial judging of a saint’s life demonstrates that the church does not 'create' saints as much as it simply recognizes them. Likewise, its renewed reminders that, for the church, miracles are serious scientific business, may make it more difficult for agnostics and atheists to disbelieve. And easier for believers to believe. “ READ MORE >
Politics
Hating Hillary: Getting to the bottom of a cultural trend that has seeped into the church
“…when vigorous political discourse turns into bashing of public figures, it perpetuates a great lie: that they are merely the ideologies and symbols attached to them. When a candidate's ideology is mistaken for his or her personhood, it masks a crucial truth: that each person, no matter their political views, bears God's image and matters deeply to him. While pundits see candidates as punching bags, evangelicals are supposed to see candidates as, well, people. As we ponder how candidates are ‘fearfully and wonderfully made,’ we may haltingly come to realize that the most bold and courageous thing we each could do this election season, no matter who we vote for, is this: Love Hillary.” READ MORE >
Culture
The Redemption of Chris Rose
“Chris Rose, a columnist for the daily Times-Picayune, was once known primarily for reporting on the bad behavior of visiting celebrities. Hurricane Katrina changed that: it transformed Rose into a plaintive voice for a struggling city. His columns detailed the emotional toll of living amid still-flatted houses and daily reminders of the 1,500 who died in the storm’s aftermath. And then, more than a year after the breached levees plunged whole districts underwater, Rose was sharing with readers the story of his own descent…” READ MORE >
Business
Why it’s so hard to keep the financial sector caged
“The US itself looks almost like a giant hedge fund. The profits of financial companies jumped from below 5 per cent of total corporate profits, after tax, in 1982 to 41 per cent in 2007, even though their share of corporate value added only rose from 8 to 16 per cent... A financial sector that generates vast rewards for insiders and repeated crises for hundreds of millions of innocent bystanders is, I would argue, politically unacceptable in the long run. Those who want market-led globalization to prosper will recognize that this is its Achilles heel. Effective action must be taken now, before a still bigger global crisis arrives.” READ MORE >
Culture
Q&A on William F. Buckley
Sam Tanenhaus ... is writing a biography of William F. Buckley Jr., who died Wednesday. Q: What is the most surprising discovery you’ve made while working on this biography of William F. Buckley Jr.? ... A: There were two. First, he would rather talk about almost anything other than politics — literature, music, sailing, music. He once told me, 'I only talk about politics when someone pays me to do it.' Second, I never heard him make a personally disparaging remark about anyone, even adversaries like Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. and Gore Vidal. He might describe something they did or the style in which they did it, but never in an insulting or even critical way. He had a large sense of the human comedy... Q: What was Buckley’s view of the current Bush administration? A: He was most distressed by it and once said if the United States had a parliamentary system, President Bush would be subject to a “no confidence” vote. He was highly critical of the war in Iraq and wrote eloquent columns on the subject in his last years." READ MORE >
Business
Free! Why $0.00 Is the Future of Business
“It took decades to shake off the assumption that computing was supposed to be rationed for the few, and we're only now starting to liberate bandwidth and storage from the same poverty of imagination. But a generation raised on the free Web is coming of age, and they will find entirely new ways to embrace waste, transforming the world in the process. Because free is what you want — and free, increasingly, is what you're going to get.” READ MORE >
Issues
The gay marriage slump: Same-sex couples deciding not to get hitched
"It was supposed to be a whole new era, as celebrations accompanied the adoption of civil union and domestic partnership laws in several states. But a funny thing happened on the way to the altar: Gay couples decided they might not want to get married after all... 'For many of us, the idea of getting married sticks in your craw. Why would anyone want to get married? It's almost a visceral reaction.'"
READ MORE >
Issues
Battle Company Is Out There
"I went to Afghanistan last fall with a question: Why, with all our technology, were we killing so many civilians in air strikes? As of September of last year, according to Human Rights Watch, NATO was causing alarmingly high numbers of civilian deaths — 350 by the coalition, compared with 438 by the insurgents... To find out, I spent much of the fall in the Korengal Valley and elsewhere in Kunar province alongside soldiers who were making life-and-death decisions almost every day — decisions that led to the deaths of soldiers and of civilians." READ MORE >
World
Anthropologists at War: Are they crossing ethical lines?
“There may be some hope … in the military's approaching anthropology for guidance in the morass that is the 'war on terror.' One can see it as an encouraging sign for the future that more soldiers and policy makers want to think anthropologically, to see and understand the world from the perspective of others. If only military and government officials had come to anthropologists and other social scientists for insight about Iraqi culture, society, and history before the invasion of Iraq, perhaps we could have avoided this tragic war.” READ MORE >
Politics
Obama: Is it all about him?
“[According to Michelle Obama,] America’s illness goes far beyond a flawed political process: “Barack knows that at some level there’s a hole in our souls.” But they can be repaired… ‘Barack Obama... is going to demand that you shed your cynicism. That you put down your divisions. That you come out of your isolation, that you move out of your comfort zones. That you push yourselves to be better. And that you engage. Barack will never allow you to go back to your lives as usual, uninvolved, uninformed.' So we don’t have to work to improve our souls. Our broken souls can be fixed — by our voting for Barack Obama.” READ MORE >
Issues
Artist hanged herself after aborting her twins
Her suicide note read: 'I told everyone I didn't want to do it, even at the hospital. I was frightened, now it is too late...' The inquest heard that Sylvia Beck, the victim's mother, wrote to the hospital after her daughter's death, saying: 'I want to know why she was not given the opportunity to see a counsellor. She was only going ahead with the abortion because her boyfriend did not want the twins. I believe this is what led Emma to take her own life - she could not live with what she had done.' The doctor said: 'I discussed Emma's situation with her, and wrote on the form, 'Unsupported, lives alone, ex-partner aware.'" READ MORE >
Business
How business can save the world
“Can businesspeople really be counted on to foster virtue? It's a shaky proposition when profits are at stake. In a 2005 debate in Reason magazine, Whole Foods founder and CEO John Mackey articulated his vision of virtuous, socially responsible business. ‘Human nature isn't just about self-interest,’ Mackey wrote, paraphrasing Adam Smith. ‘It also includes sympathy, empathy, friendship, love, and the desire for social approval. As motives for human behavior, these are at least as important as self-interest. For many people, they are more important.’" READ MORE >
World
Stifled, Egypt’s Young Turn to Islamic Fervor
“'I can’t get a job, I have no money, I can’t get married, what can I say?’ Mr. Sayyid said… In their frustration, the young are turning to religion for solace and purpose, pulling their parents and their governments along with them. With 60 percent of the region’s population under the age of 25, this youthful religious fervor has enormous implications for the Middle East. More than ever, Islam has become the cornerstone of identity, replacing other, failed ideologies: Arabism, socialism, nationalism.” READ MORE >
Issues
For the Children: David Blankenhorn and Kay S. Hymowitz on marriage
“The material Blankenhorn amasses establishes that far from a private relationship to satisfy adult needs, marriage is a social institution to meet social needs. Against this argument the case for same-sex marriage cannot stand… [A]ccepting same-sex marriage means accepting same-sex parenthood, by whatever means a child is acquired. This will deny the child the very benefit marriage was instituted to confer on him. Blankenhorn characterizes Andrew Sullivan's argument as ‘reeking of narcissism’ and demanding that ‘we worry less about children and more about adults.’" READ MORE >
Faith
Pope: Why the ‘dual-unity’ of man and woman is important
“[it] is based on the foundation of the dignity of every person, created in the image and likeness of God, who ‘created them male and female’ (Genesis 1:27), as much avoiding an indistinct uniformity and flattened-out and impoverished equality as an abysmal and conflictive difference … This dual-unity carries with it, inscribed in bodies and souls, the relation with the other, love for the other, interpersonal communion that shows that ‘the creation of man is also marked by a certain likeness to the divine communion.’ When, therefore, men or women pretend to be autonomous or totally self-sufficient, they risk being closed up in a self-realization … which in fact reduces them to an oppressive solitude.” READ MORE >
Life
Overselling Overmedication: The panic over pill-popping may be wrong
“People have been unofficially drugging themselves for as long as they’ve had the capability to do so. They smoked cigarettes to boost their concentration. They drank cocktails with lunch and dinner — and more — to deal with anxiety and despair. Prior to the modern era of F.D.A.-regulated prescribing practices, they slugged down untold quantities of tonics and bromides. All of which suggests that what social critics now identify as the signature event of our time (the urge to manage psychic pain through substance use) may, in fact, almost always have been a facet of the human condition. It may just be that we’re better at it than ever before – with cleaner, safer, less addictive and debilitating tools at our disposal.” READ MORE >
Business
Too many stores: How long will the anti-shopping backlash last?
“The extreme consumption of this current gilded age has inspired a backlash. In December, hedge-fund billionaire Ray Dalio ran full-page advertisements in newspapers urging Americans to eschew Christmas gifts and instead make donations to charity. Maybe he's just run out of things to buy. Or maybe he's surfing the zeitgeist… [but] the cultural anti-retail moment will likely pass. Thoreau lasted only 26 months in his cabin by Walden Pond. The elevation of frugality into a virtue seems likely to last about as long as modern recessions do—about eight months.” READ MORE >
World
Nicolas Sarkozy embraces God as good for society, igniting debate over church and state in France
Last December Sarkozy expounded on "’France's essentially Christian roots. A man who believes is a man who hopes,’ said the president. ‘And the interest of the republic is that there be a lot of men and women who hope.’ He advocated a new ‘positive secularism’ that ‘doesn't consider religions a danger, but an asset.’ And he declared, ‘In the transmission of values and in the teaching of the difference between good and evil, the schoolteacher will never be able to replace the priest or the pastor.’" READ MORE >
World
Letter to the Family of the Palestinian Sniper Who Killed David Damelin
This for me is one of the most difficult letters I will ever have to write. My name is Robi Damelin, I am the mother of David who was killed by your son. I know he did not kill David because he was David, if he had known him he could never have done such a thing... I also feel that if he understood that taking the life of another may not be the way and that if he understood the consequences of his act, he could see that a non-violent solution is the only way for both nations to live together in peace. READ MORE >
Culture
The ‘Problem of Evil’ in Postwar Europe
“After 1945 our parents' generation set aside the problem of evil because —for them—it contained too much meaning. The generation that will follow us is in danger of setting the problem aside because it now contains too little meaning. How can we prevent this? How, in other words, can we ensure that the problem of evil remains the fundamental question for intellectual life, and not just in Europe? I don't know the answer but I am pretty sure that it is the right question.” READ MORE >
Politics
Who will Catholics vote for in November—Obama or McCain?
“Sorry to tell you this, Sen. McCain, but a good number of the Catholics I know are not certain to light candles at the Republican political altar. Some of us who rode McCain's Straight Talk Express before the Republican commitment to a balanced budget put us on track toward a $400 billion deficit appreciate his confessed desire to redeem himself as a faithful conservative. But there are suspicions. After all, hanging out with Joe Lieberman and Russ Feingold comes well within the Latin canon: Similes similibus gaudent. Pares cum paribus facile congregantur—birds of a feather flock together.” READ MORE >
Faith
N.T. Wright says don’t think heaven, think Resurrection
“Our culture is very interested in life after death, but the New Testament is much more interested in what I've called the life after life after death — in the ultimate resurrection into the new heavens and the new Earth... John Polkinghorne, a physicist and a priest, has put it this way: ‘God will download our software onto his hardware until the time he gives us new hardware to run the software again for ourselves.’ That gets to two things nicely: that the period after death is a period when we are in God's presence but not active in our own bodies, and also that the more important transformation will be when we are again embodied and administering Christ's kingdom.” READ MORE >
Faith
20-Something Evangelicals: a new vision, a timeless orthodoxy
“Theologically, these 20-somethings are abandoning a worldview that reduces the gospel of Jesus Christ to an afterlife-oriented, fire-insurance, salvation pitch. These are Matthew 25, Luke 4, and “Sermon on the Mount” Christians. They really believe that the kingdom of God represents God’s best hopes and dreams for this present age, not only for the life to come. From coffee-infused, late-night seminary conversations to missions trips bringing them into relationship with single mothers living in the crumbling remains of America’s inner cities, with children living on garbage dumps in Mexico, with teenage girls rescued out of Southeast Asia’s sex industry, and with the boy soldiers of sub-Saharan Africa – the 20-something evangelical worldview is being disciplined by a new global context. “ READ MORE >
Politics
Young voters will help, but can’t elect, Obama
"If [Obama] wins his party’s nomination, the 46-year-old stands a shot against the 72-year-old John McCain. Even so, Obama would need to find a bloc of voters outside his coalition of blacks and yuppies. But the history of the post-1968 Democratic party suggests that Obama would struggle in wooing a new constituency. The national party has pursued the votes of young people, minorities, and liberated women first and foremost — and those of the white working class and Catholics second, if at all. As a result, only two of the party’s last seven presidential nominees have won. Obama could be the third winner, but he will need more than hope." READ MORE >
Faith
Pope urges more spiritual exercises
"He affirmed that spiritual exercises are 'a strong experience of God, sustained by listening to his word, understood and welcomed in one's personal life under the action of the Holy Spirit, which in a climate of silence, prayer and by means of a spiritual guide, offer the capacity of discernment in order to purify the heart, convert one's life, follow Christ, and fulfill one's own mission in the Church and in the world...' The Pope contended that 'in an age in which there is an ever stronger influence of secularization, and, on the other hand, in which there is experienced a widespread need to encounter God, the possibility of offering spaces of intense listening to his Word in silence and prayer should not falter.'" READ MORE >
What lies beyond Lambeth’s Sharia humiliation?
What is happening here, it seems to me, is that the dilemmas of a withering and shrinking (if not dying) institution, the established Church of England, are being awkwardly welded onto the insecurities and threats experienced by other minority communities in order to produce a case for the preservation of one in conjunction with the granting of new influence to the other. This is misguided for all kinds of reasons. From a Christian point of view, the church should be [a church] … willing to take risks more than it craved safeguards. One committed to the ethos of peacemaking rather than the ethos of armed defence. One willing to move away from internal squabbling, resist tempting absorption into the government’s contract culture, and abandon rearguard actions against the demise of the old Christendom era where its allegiance rested on the status quo much more than on the subversive company of Jesus. These are the challenging yet exciting issues one would hope an archbishop of a resourceful church in England, rather than a fading Church of England, might be willing to tackle. It would take imagination, bravery, intelligence and prayerfulness. But he has those in spades.” READ MORE >
Life
Why do kids lie? They’re just copying their parents.
“‘We don’t explicitly tell them to lie, but they see us do it. They see us tell the telemarketer, ‘I’m just a guest here.’ They see us boast and lie to smooth social relationships…’ Encouraged to tell so many white lies and hearing so many others, children gradually get comfortable with being disingenuous. Insincerity becomes, literally, a daily occurrence. They learn that honesty only creates conflict, and dishonesty is an easy way to avoid conflict. And while they don’t confuse white-lie situations with lying to cover their misdeeds, they bring this emotional groundwork from one circumstance to the other.” READ MORE >
Culture
Bible as Graphic Novel, With a Samurai Stranger Called Christ
“In a blurb for the Manga Bible, which is published by Doubleday, the archbishop of Canterbury, the Most Rev. Rowan Williams, is quoted as saying, ‘It will convey the shock and freshness of the Bible in a unique way.’ No doubt. In the Manga Bible, whose heroes look and sound like skateboarders in Bedouin gear, Noah gets tripped up counting the animals in the Ark: “That’s 11,344 animals? Arggh! I’ve lost count again. I’m going to have to start from scratch!” READ MORE >
Faith
Evangelicals Split Over Response to Muslim Letter
“Christianity Today editor in chief David Neff, who signed the Yale letter, said the document fulfills its narrow goal of peacemaking. ‘[F]undamental theological differences were not on the table for discussion in these letters," Neff said. "The point of the letter was to say we appreciate you putting the olive branch out there, and we're eager to talk with you.’" READ MORE >
Issues
A Liberal Admits that ‘Christianophobia” is a Problem
“In parts of Africa where bandits and warlords shoot or rape anything that moves, you often find that the only groups still operating are Doctors Without Borders and religious aid workers: crazy doctors and crazy Christians. In the town of Rutshuru in war-ravaged Congo, I found starving children, raped widows and shellshocked survivors. And there was a determined Catholic nun from Poland, serenely running a church clinic. Unlike the religious right windbags, she was passionately ‘pro-life’ even for those already born — and brave souls like her are increasingly representative of religious conservatives. We can disagree sharply with their politics, but to mock them underscores our own ignorance and prejudice.” READ MORE >
Culture
Reaching Out to Moderate Muslims is Smart
“Daniel Pipes has suggested that ‘mak[ing] a distinction between the mainstream Islamists and the fringe ones [is] like making a distinction between mainstream Nazis and fringe Nazis. They’re all Nazis, they’re all the enemy.’ Is this the case? Suppose that, to continue Pipes’s analogy, there had been Nazis who clearly rejected violence, as some who call themselves Islamists have done. Would they not have been meaningfully distinguishable from Hitler’s crew? An anathema so sweeping as Pipes’s can lead to classifying individuals or groups wrongly, or overlooking important transformations in attitude… [R]adical Islamism is a fragile and perishable ideology, and, unless we surrender, there is little possibility that it will triumph. The only question is how much damage it will do before it implodes… anyone who can help us to forestall the worst is worth our trouble to cultivate.” READ MORE >
Faith
Sister Rose and a Teenager’s First Headscarf
“Before the headscarf affair, I was fanatically loyal to my school, extremely fond of Sister Rose, and popular with my friends – ‘the class pet,’ some called me. I had looked up to Sister Rose and empathized with her religiosity. I thought of her tears as she sang a hymn at the nativity play, and I thought of my own tears as I listened to a hamd (an Urdu hymn). With Sister's rejection of my religiosity came an enormous distancing. It pushed me away from my friends and my social circle. I felt like my trust in everything had been broken. Sister had broken me, and I would not be broken like that again… It didn't have to be that way, I often think today… " READ MORE >
Politics
Evangelical Leader James Dobson Endorses Mike Huckabee
"His record on the institution of the family and other conservative issues makes his candidacy a matter of conscience and concern for me... His unwavering positions on the social issues, notably the institution of marriage, the importance of faith and the sanctity of human life, resonate deeply with me and with many others." READ MORE >
Issues
After Hard-Won Lessons, Army Doctrine Revised
“The American military’s difficulty in securing Iraq has led to much soul-searching within the armed forces on how to prepare for future conflicts… The Army has drafted a new operations manual that elevates the mission of stabilizing war-torn nations, making it equal in importance to defeating adversaries on the battlefield…” READ MORE >
Politics
Weird Times, Weirder Election
"In this crazy year, the election may finally come down to how many Democrats — scared that they don’t know enough about Obama, or know too much about the Clintons — will vote for a veteran pro like McCain. Or, on the flip side, how many “true” conservatives will stay home in November to ensure that a liberal wins the White House just to prove their purity." READ MORE >
Open Field: Voters Lack Signposts in this Election
"For a decade from 1995 to 2005, we operated in a period of trench-warfare politics, with two approximately equal-sized armies waging a culture war in which very small amounts of ground made the difference between victory and defeat. It was pretty clear what the major issues were, what strategies were necessary to win a party's nomination, how to maximize your side's turnout on election day (and, increasingly, in early voting). But times change. Somewhere between Hurricane Katrina in August 2005 and the bombing of the Samarra mosque in February 2006, I believe we entered a period of open-field politics, in which voters and candidates are moving around -- a field in which there are no familiar landmarks or new signposts." READ MORE >
Politics
Can McCain Win Over Right-Wingers?
"For McCain's critics on the right, the OSI funding implicates the Arizona senator in all the progressive and libertarian causes that the Soros foundation has supported -- including reproductive rights, drug law and sentencing reform, public financing of elections and abolition of the death penalty, to give a short list. If that sounds like guilt by association, McCarthy style, that kind of thinking is hardly alien to Limbaugh, Coulter and their fans." READ MORE >
Politics
Political Split Between Evangelicals and Their Spokesmen
“Should Obama earn the Democratic nomination, his message of hope and unity will appeal to young evangelicals… The successes of Huckabee and McCain show that evangelicals are open to a broader policy agenda… But their moderate economic policies also strain a delicate if formerly successful platform. ‘One conclusion that you could draw is a lot evangelicals are ready to move beyond President Bush…’” READ MORE >
Politics
Obama vulnerable in November because of liberal policies
“The one thing that will keep Obama's appeal from translating into widespread support among Republicans is that he is, on almost every issue, a conventional liberal... politics is finally and fundamentally about ideas and philosophy… If he wanted to demonstrate his independence from liberal orthodoxy he could come out in favor of school choice for low-income families, which would both help poor families and demonstrate support for some of the best faith-based institutions in America: urban parochial schools. If Obama becomes the Democratic nominee and fails to take steps such as this, his liberal views will be his greatest vulnerability.” READ MORE >
Politics
Why liberal bloggers don’t love Obama
“Obama is, in some respects, the ideal candidate of the Yearly Kos contingent--an insurgent who opposed the Iraq war, generated grassroots enthusiasm, and built a massive online fund-raising apparatus. But the bloggers who champion these things have not all rallied around Obama… Obama's readiness to embrace conservatives and chastise his allies on the left have caused many bloggers to wonder how strongly he would fight for liberal priorities as president.” READ MORE >
Griefers are the Sociopaths of the Virtual World
"Broadly speaking, a griefer is an online version of the spoilsport — someone who takes pleasure in shattering the world of play itself... Griefing, as a term, dates to the late 1990s, when it was used to describe the willfully antisocial behaviors seen in early massively multiplayer games… No longer just an isolated pathology, griefing has developed a full-fledged culture… Amid the complex alchemy of seriousness and play that makes online games so uniquely compelling, the griefer is the one player whose fun depends on finding that elusive edge where online levity starts to take on real-life weight…" READ MORE >
Issues
Financial Scandal Reveals French Paradox on Capitalism
"…the SocGen drama encapsulates the contradictions of France's attitude to capitalism: on the one hand, there is widespread suspicion of the markets; on the other, world-class financial skills… In a 2006 poll, only 36% agreed that the free market was the best system available, compared with 71% of Americans and 66% of the British… This week, Mr Sarkozy once again declared: ‘We want a capitalism of entrepreneurs, not a capitalism of speculators.'" READ MORE >
Politics
Is Political Bias Backfiring on Fox News?
"Fox News continues to embarrass itself with a type of journalism that nobody else in the industry would dare call professional… An all-out Fox News marketing blitz to label Giuliani ‘America's Mayor’ never got traction… In the meantime, the rise of Sen. John McCain and especially Mike Huckabee, with his populist streak, has caused all sorts of consternation at Fox News… And don't even mention Ron Paul's name to the folks at Fox News, who have stepped outside their role as journalists to try to kneecap the antiwar GOP candidate." READ MORE >
Catholic Media Should Avoid Fundamentalism, says Vatican
"Archbishop Celli cautioned that ‘Catholic mass media cannot dispense with the ethical problem faced by all the media, because it is undeniable that everything that affects man as man should be a point of reference… they don't exist only for - or are directed only to - people who already belong to the Church, rather they should also give careful attention to what exists in the soul of man, in his heart, where sometimes there can be distance from God, or many times, a deep nostalgia for God.’ Our media, he summarized, ‘should search, and help in the search.’” READ MORE >
TV
Dirty Jobs’ Mike Rowe on the Dignity of Labor
"Dirty Jobs is an homage to George Plimpton, with a nod to Studs Terkel--an introduction, Rowe says, to the 'men and women who do the kinds of jobs that make civilized life possible for the rest of us.' Watching Rowe struggle with a forklift or wade through raw sewage is good, nasty fun. But for all the bathroom humor, his real curiosity about and respect for his subjects telegraphs a powerful message: There's dignity in hard work, expertise in unexpected places, and deep satisfaction in tackling and finishing a tough job." READ MORE >
Culture
What’s Behind Steroids? A Culture of Fear
"We must openly address not only the drug issues plaguing the sports we love, but the culture of fear that shakes our society... We’re scared of failure, aging, vulnerability, leaving too soon, being passed up — and in the quest to conquer these fears, we are inspired by those who do whatever it takes to rise above and beat these odds. We call it 'drive' or 'ambition,' but when doing 'whatever it takes' leads us down the wrong road, it can erode our humanity. The game ends up playing us..." READ MORE >
Science/Tech
Big Brain Theory: Have Cosmologists Lost Theirs?
“It could be the weirdest and most embarrassing prediction in the history of cosmology, if not science… If true, it would mean that you yourself reading this article are more likely to be some momentary fluctuation in a field of matter and energy out in space than a person with a real past born through billions of years of evolution in an orderly star-spangled cosmos… If you are inclined to skepticism this debate might seem like further evidence that cosmologists… have finally lost their minds.” READ MORE >
Issues
These Scientists Can’t Tolerate the Pope
"Sixty one Italian scientists have signed a letter protesting against a planned visit this week by Pope Benedict XVI to Rome's Sapienza University because of his stated views on Galileo... Then Cardinal Ratzinger ... observed that 'At the time of Galileo the Church remained much more faithful to reason than Galileo himself. The process against Galileo was reasonable and just.' The Italian Catholic writer Vittorio Messori agreed, saying Galileo 'was not condemned for the things he said, but for the way he said them. He made statements with sectarian intolerance...'" READ MORE >
Movies
Movie Violence Might Temper the Real Thing
"“The study’s premise strikes me as somewhat goofy,' said Melissa Henson, senior director of programs at the Parents Television Council, a media watchdog... 'I’d hate for people to walk away with the message that, ‘Oh, I ought to send my son to watch violent movies so they won’t go out and drink or do drugs and commit violent crime...’" READ MORE >
Culture
Scholar sees a Catholic in the Bard
Another book arguing that Shakespeare’s plays were written from a Catholic perspective. It’s too bad, but until there’s hard evidence that Shakespeare was a practicing Catholic, the literary establishment will keep ignoring these books. The best one so far is Claire Asquith’s Shadowplay.
READ MORE >
Science/Tech
Taking Science on Faith
Unlike biologists, who get tarred with the brush of Creationism at the slightest mention of the G-word, physicists have been free to bring God into their speculation. Here, physicist Paul Davies explains the obvious: that both religion and science are confronted with mysteries that can’t be reduced to theories or empirical investigation.… READ MORE >
Faith
Why Benedict XVI Is So Cautious with the Letter of the 138 Muslims
Few observers are more hardnosed and skeptical about dialogue with Islam than Sandro Magister. Sometimes he goes overboard, but here he’s probably right to contrast the fawning response by 300 Christian scholars to the Muslim “letter of the 138” to the Pope’s more toughminded, nuanced stance. How many apologies for… READ MORE >
Science/Tech
After Stem-Cell Breakthrough, the Work Begins
Now that embryonic stem cell research may no longer require the destruction of human life, is it just a coinicidence that the NY Times is emphasizing how far scientists still have to go to develop successful treatments?
READ MORE >
Issues
Bob Guccione Jr. finds his way back to church
"For Gooch, an erstwhile altar boy who describes himself as 'a lazy but devout Catholic,' science is incomplete without the contemplation of faith. 'I have no trouble whatsoever accommodating, side by side, the ideas of multiple universes and the Immaculate Conception...'” READ MORE >
Issues
Pat Robertson Endorses Giuliani for President
Pat Robertson puts the “War on Terror” and Christian nationalism ahead of the Gospel and traditional values, and confirms liberal claims that the Christian Right is interested in power, not piety. READ MORE >
Issues
Human Therapeutic Cloning at a Standstill
Issues
Anti-Aging Drugs Could Change the Nature of Death
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