I’ve commented before on those alarmist reports about polls showing that Muslims in this country think of themselves as Muslims, not Americans, first. But of course. The same should be true of any Christian who has thought about the matter.
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Fr. Neuhaus of "First Things"The sacramental/ritual/hierarchical structure of Catholicism keeps it relatively steady, but tempts us to neglect the personal aspect of faith. The personal focus of evangelical Protestantism gives it energy, but can lead to mistaking emotional responses for faith, and so on.-
Amy Welborn, on how our greatest strength can also be our greatest weakness"Forgiving Ourselves" - These words were seen on the sign in front of the Unitarian church near here, and they presumably were meant to indicate the theme of this coming Sunday's sermon. What can be said? It puzzles this observer: why belong to a church that preaches self-absolution?
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Dylan of "More Last than Star"There are those who are comfortable with the idea of a free economy as a necessary institution for providing material well being for the human family. It simply is not possible to support six billion people on a system of central planning or on agrarian or distributivist principles. At the same time, there are the Sojourners who feel grave discomfort at what they perceive to be the materialism of our age and thereby seek system-wide change. Finally, there are the moralists who minimize debates about politics and rather seek to inspire personal moral piety. What we need to see is the greater compatibility between the three positions than is usually supposed, provided there is freedom in which the three approaches can work. No society under any economic system will be free of greed, but the free economy produces the wealth that also makes charity and philanthropy possible. In addition, for those who seek simpler lives and private piety, the free economic system provides the room and possibility to make that choice. Davenport does not appear to be what I would call a pro-market thinker, which is what I suppose I might be called. Nonetheless, this book has identified the critical issues of the debate in those times and in our own. Christianity has adapted itself to many cultures and settings, but the advent of capitalism did provide its own special challenges. How can a religion born in a world of poverty, and centered on the eventual glory associated with death on a cross, thrive in a world of fantastic levels of material prosperity? The experience of Americans shows how, and the views of the thinkers highlighted in this volume explain how a reconciliation can occur. It comes down to the critical fact that the most productive economic system ever known also happens to be the one that is most respectful of human rights and dignity, and provides the freedom to worship.
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Fr. Robert A. Sirico on "First Things"First, sadly the abortion mentality is so pervasive in American culture; a devout, pro-life Catholic may not have a bona fide pro-life choice in elections. Second, moral theology teaches us that there is a difference between direct consequences (i.e. a Catholic cannot vote for someone with the intent of expanding or perpetuating abortion) and indirect consequences (this would be choosing the politician who, when no truly pro-life option is available, is the best on the gamut of issues encompassed by Catholic social teaching).
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Fr. Paul Hartmann of "Ask a Priest", asked if a Catholic could vote for a pro-abortion candidate; via TBProportion is not ultimately a matter of opinion. It is a matter of both facts and opinions -- and principles, too, of course...Suppose I judge that a certain act of remote material cooperation with evil will produce a good that is proportionate to my level of cooperation. Then, since that's exactly what a proportionate reason is, in my judgment I have a proportionate reason. Now, my judgment needs to be well-founded, but (except for trivial cases) it cannot be entirely founded on facts and principles. Something entirely founded on facts and principles isn't a matter of opinion, but knowledge, and a proposition about future contingent things cannot be a matter of knowledge (for humans at least)....Even a sound argument for proportion will [almost always] need to rely on opinion about uncertain things, where the uncertainty comes not just because I don't know some things, but because some things don't yet and may never exist.
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Tom of DisputationsLiberal Catholics, [Dougherty] writes, “find their most powerful allies in the hierarchy of the Church... the New York archdiocese alone has over 110 different offices, with some organs of Church bureaucracy dedicated to immigrants, others to diversity, and others still to the promotion of social justice.”...It should not be said that all liberal Catholics are heretical. But those who are must ask themselves: why break away from an institution when we already run it? “Conservatives, political and theological, tend to be an insurgent force in the Church, establishing new institutions rather than occupying old ones,” Dougherty points out...I had taken solace that dissenting groups like Call to Action are aging and powerless. Under Dougherty’s analysis, we see that such groups are merely superfluous. Their needs for networking and information-sharing are served by the faculty lounges or the national conferences for liturgists or catechists. Dissenting ideologies are all the more effective in these organizations when they have become taken for granted.
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Kevin Jones of PhilokaliaThe complete indifference, if not outright hostility, to anything different [in small towns] is... exacerbated by mobility. The people who would be part of any town's creative class would once upon a time have returned to the town to hang out a shingle as a doctor, a lawyer, a teacher, etc., and leavened the community by their interests. And in turn, they would have been shaped by living among others not like them. Nowadays, though, it's easy, and often mandatory, for them to leave for the big city in search of work and of marriageable partners. I don't know what the answer to this is. But as we get more and more segregated along these lines, you end up with culture wars like the one that erupted over Sarah Palin, which was really class war in disguise. Urban people fear and loathe small town and city people, and vice versa. Same planet, different worlds.
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Rod DreherCBS New anchor Katie Couric ordered staff to drop all references to “Governor” or “Gov.” from her interview with Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin. When a staff member pointed out that in other venues, Couric and CBS News had referred to Governor Palin’s opponent, Joe Biden, using his title of “Senator” or the abbreviation, Couric, according to a CBS News editorial aide, sought approval from CBS News management to drop the “Governor” reference during her broadcast interview with Palin that began on Wednesday night. -
from the American Spectator blog My beloved viewed the whole thing last night, and was thrilled by Palin’s charisma. “She is darling,” my Southern belle gushed. “She’s feisty, she’s fierce—and ohmigod is she beautiful. After five children—did you see
that figure?” These are not virtues we should take lightly—in a world where the alternative is four years of staring down Joe Biden’s hairplugs. No less an authority than Aristotle allowed that
ethos and delivery were central elements in rhetoric.
-John Zmirak, after Palin's speech at the Republican conventionA young man, urged on by his mother, came to me for confession. He really had no faith. We began to have a discussion and, at a certain point, in the face of my diatribe, he laughed and said: "Listen, all that you are trying so forcefully to tell me is not worth as much as what I am about to tell you. You cannot deny that the true grandeur of man is represented by Dante's Capaneus, that giant chained by God to Hell, yet who cries to God, "I cannot free myself from these chains because you bind me here. You cannot, however, free me from blaspheming you, and so I blaspheme you.' This is the true grandeur of man." After being unsettled for a few seconds, I said calmly, "But isn't it even greater to love the infinite?"
-Giussani's "Religious Sense" via Frederick of "Deep Furrows"When we are in a burning train wreck in progress, and we have definite and clear means to get out and to rescue many others in the process, we have a concrete obligation to actually do so. If doing so violates our economic theories about actions and consequences that tells us something about our economic theories; it doesn't tell us anything about our concrete moral obligations right here and now. So color me unimpressed when it is suggested that the Chicago School is against the government injecting liquidity into the market to prevent a disastrous collapse with global implications. The last century or so is littered with the bodies of people who have suffered and even died for the sake of vindicating economic theories. "Let Main Street burn, because my economic theory tells me we should" is not a proposition I find it even slightly tempting to adopt.
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Zippy of Zippy CatholicFirst Thing We Do, Let's Retain All the Lawyers
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title of ABC News blog post via Terrence Berres, regarding Joe Biden's boast that he's that he's "done more than any other senator combined" for trial lawyers