from CityJournal:
All Communist regimes follow strangely similar trajectories, barely colored by local traditions. In every case, these regimes seek to make a blank slate of the past and to forge a new humanity.
from Not Dead Yet:
Where I - and other disability activists - part with politically Right-leaning opponents of assisted suicide is that we see cause for alarm on the Right as well. A lot of radical conservative rhetoric right now - like from the Tea Party - sounds pretty pro-death if you're a person with a disability, chronic condition, etc.
If that sounds extreme and alarmist (as opposed to the "death panel" cries), please watch the video embedded below. It's good old "Compassionate Conservative Christian Mike Huckabee" speaking at the "Values Voter Summit" - the site for the summit says the "values" they want to further are to: protect marriage, champion life, strengthen the military, limit government, control spending and defend our freedoms. Guess which one of those "values" Huckabee throws under the bus?
from Christianity Today:
Nothing ambiguous here. The problem wasn't that the Church failed to condemn slavery; it was that few heard and most of them did not listen. In this era, popes had little or no influence over the Spanish and the Portuguese since at that time the Spanish ruled most of Italy; in 1527, under the leadership of Charles V, they had even sacked Rome.
As Eugene Genovese put it: "Catholicism made a profound difference in the lives of the slaves. [It] imparted to Brazilian and Spanish American slave societies an ethos…of genuine spiritual power."
from Spiked:
Socrates’ relentless questioning of received moral wisdom and authority, his struggle to apprehend real existence in consciousness, would make him many enemies.
This argument, that all that mattered was care for one’s soul, is, she points out, possibly the one thing that the young democracy could not rightly accept. It was, in effect, a rejection of the people in the name of the individual and conscience. Only Socrates was wise - he tells us in Plato’s Apology (an account of his defence during the trial) - because he knew he was ignorant. Everyone else was simply ignorant.
from her.meneutics:
from Brains on Purpose:
From Alive and Kicking:
The Euthanasia Drumbeat Gets Louder
Across the world, the inexorable push for accepting the new culture of death continues unabated.
It's not a pretty picture, because whichever way you turn, there is pressure for assisted suicide and euthanasia to become an acceptable and even hallowed part of the social fabric.
While the roots of assisted suicide and euthanasia are hardly of recent vintage, the contemporary ground zero in our lifetimes is the Netherlands. more
from Scriptorum Daily:
Flannery O’Connor wrote that ‘somewhere is better than anywhere’. The mistake I make – maybe you make it, too – comes when I try to think about ‘the needs of the world’ or ‘the beauty of the world’ rather than starting with the needs or the beauty of somewhere in particular.
In a recent opinion piece in the Wall Street Journal praising Bol’s ‘radical Christianity’ and chiding sports journalists’ tendency to ignore the Christian faith that energizes selflessness like Bol’s, Jon Shields writes:
Bol reportedly gave most of his fortune, estimated at $6 million, to aid Sudanese refugees. As one twitter feed aptly put it: “Most NBA cats go broke on cars, jewelry & groupies. Manute Bol went broke building hospitals.”
from ChristianityToday:
In the meantime, they figured out that if this God is who he says he is—gracious and merciful and abounding in steadfast love—then maybe he is like a father who has compassion on the adolescent spirituality of his people, a people who can't help but be wrapped up in themselves and their problems. And when they looked closely, they saw God's hand in those changed lives and in those changed communities, even though those changed lives and changed communities kept talking mostly about themselves!
This struck some as pretty unfair to God, as it did not give him or his glory proper due! Some were starting to get hotly indignant at the blindness and selfishness of people, when someone noted how this seemed to be the way of God, whose Son died for the world knowing full well that it was mostly indifferent to him.
At this, some of the indignant stomped off, separating themselves, complaining about "cheap grace," promising a divine comeuppance. But others were both startled and calmed at the divine patience, and just shook their heads in wonder.
from Christian Post:
"Instead of developing an intimate, loving, all or nothing relationship with Jesus Christ what we've done is we have bought into religion," pastor Brian Bloye said.
The Dallas pastor, who founded West Ridge in 1997, grew up in a religious home. His way of being a Christian was following a set of rules or a list: read the Bible, pray, attend church regularly, don't look at porn, don't have premarital sex, don't listen to bad music, and don't smoke or drink or cuss. He prided himself in his list.
"It had nothing to do with pleasing God. It really was all about seeing if I could keep up with the list," he explained.
"Yet all that was just religion," he said, adding that he ultimately felt empty.
"Religion never creates true fully devoted followers of Jesus Christ. All it does is create more religious people.
And a lot of times, it creates "ugly religious people," he said.
In 1987, Bloye made a decision – not a salvation decision because he already had that down – but a decision that involved total commitment and one that not many Christians have made.
"What God really wants from us is total commitment," he stressed. That means, giving God everything, holding nothing back and not playing the game.
And the motivation is the mercy of God, His grace and love, and gratitude, rather than fear.
"God doesn't want your church attendance, your money, your Bible time, ... your religious list," he said. "What He wants is you. That's all God wants from you."
Bloye is among an increasing number of megachurch pastors who have recently challenged their congregations to get off the fence and become true disciples of Christ. Last week, southern California pastor Rick Warren told fake Christians to find another church if they're not willing to be a true Christ follower.
from GetReligion:
“I had a sudden strong sense of religion being a thing of the present day, not imprisoned under thick layers of time. My large catalogue of misdeeds replayed themselves rapidly in my head.”
blurbat had the same mind bending beautiful letdown in 2003...
from NationalPost:
Writing in Catholic World, George Neumayr got it right: “The moral authority of these Church-hating ideologues is nil. We are witnessing the repulsively absurd spectacle of a culture drenched in depravity lecturing the Vicar of Christ on moral responsibility. One doesn’t even have to agree with every action or inaction of Benedict’s ecclesiastical career to see that these attacks on him have been appallingly stupid, glib and Pharisaical.”
Why do Catholics, by and large, put up with this?
There are several explanations, some hopeful, others less so.
from AfterExistentialismLight:
There’s a deep philosophical (and theological) principle in this line from Alicia Nash in the film, A Beautiful Mind:
“Often what I feel is obligation, or guilt over wanting to leave, or rage against John, against God. — But then I look at him and I force myself to see the man I married. And he becomes that man. He’s transformed into someone I love. And then I’m transformed into someone who loves him.”
And now, Hans Urs von Balthasar, from Theo-Logic I: Truth of the World:
“The lover simply lets the real, imperfect image of the beloved sink into nonbeing. In the lover’s eyes, this image has no validity, no weight, no right to exist. It is, so to say, crossed out, banished from the cosmos of existing things. It is not honored with knowledge. It is not accorded the same measure of significance as if it were meant to unveil itself, as if it possessed, in other words, a truth of its own that was pronounced enough to take seriously. …God’s knowledge of things is absolutely archetypal and exemplary. He has in himself the ideas of things. This image is the correct one, not because God sees things more objectively than we do, but because the image he projects is as such the one true image that is both subjective and objective at once. Because God sees things thus, they should be as he sees them. It is to this idea of things held in God’s safekeeping that all of man’s creative knowledge has to look. Only in God can one man see another as he is supposed to be.” (Ignatius Press, pp. 117, 119-120)
And, hence, the importance of an Atonement that is universal.
from MindfulHack:
"Roy Varghese has just notified me of the death of Professor emeritus Antony Flew, the rationalist philosopher who died on April 8 aged 87, spent much of his life denying the existence of God until, in 2004, he dramatically changed his mind.
Here is Britain’s Telegraph’s obituary.
I feel lonely now. I remember sitting in the window seat at the U rez in about 1968, studying Flew. He really made people think.
Varghese is kind enough to thank me for contributions I have made to the discussion - essentially defending Flew.
For the record, here are some of them:
Flew calls Dawkins a bigot - and I would say he has a pretty good case. On that point, also here.
New atheists vs the ex-atheist
Response to hit review of Flew’s “There IS a God” in The New York Times.
Antony Flew: Is emotion really better than reason in religious matters?
Antony Flew: Is he too old to believe in God?
Why lifelong atheist Antony Flew decided there must be a God"
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