Apropos of Nothing

Jimmy posts a picture of Botticelli's The Birth of Venus, which is one of the works on my flash card list:

The Nekkid Truth: "

Another from Old World Swine;

I remember the first time I sat in a figure drawing class and worked
from a real, live, nekkid model. I was a little nervous before, as were
probably a lot of us wet-eared art undergrads. I don't know how
everyone else responded when the young lady dropped her bathrobe, but I
expect their experience wasn't too different from my own; there were a
few moments of awkward ogling, a few moments of stern and studied
pretense at ignoring the obvious, and then - something else. I began to
think about how I could wring a good drawing out of the pose. As I
started to draw, my brain began to break the model down into her
component elements... line and form, light and shadow, muscle and bone.
Within a minute, and for the remainder of the class, she registered no
more on my libido-meter than a clay pot or a fern. And I was not nearly
such a paragon of virtue and restraint as I am now.

Not everyone has had the benefit of such a class, of course, but it
did demonstrate to me in unmistakable terms the very real difference
between appreciating the beauty of the human form and what might be
called the Look of Lust. I had the great privilege of having my view of
the female form somewhat redeemed and baptized long before I knew
anything of John Paul II's Theology of the Body. In this work, he makes
brilliantly clear that the mere repression of lustful thoughts is not
enough, and may even be unhealthy in the long run. We must learn -
through the help of the Holy Spirit, the teaching of the Church, the
sacraments and prayer - to change the way we perceive the human body.
We must have our thoughts redeemed. We should work toward being able to
thank God for the breathtaking beauty of the human body, and through
giving thanks and praise to the Creator, disarm and disable Lust.

The idea is not to cage our lust, but to drag it out into the light where it can be transformed by the Holy Spirit.

Not that nudity is something to be treated lightly. We are fallen,
after all. There is nudity - even under the pretext of art - that is
wholly inappropriate. If it is intended to excite lust, or if it in
fact does so, then it is unhealthy.

How do we tell the difference? Obviously, this is a matter of
judgment. For one aware of his own weakness, one sincerely committed to
trying to please God in everything, one familiar with Original Sin, one
who has been trained to respect the dictates of conscience... a
certain' amount of confidence in personal judgment is possible, and can
be developed. In the words of St. Augustine, 'Love God and do as you
please'.

For one lacking these things, it may be impossible, though I believe
that even based only on natural law one can tell the difference between
a painting that is basically an act of praise and homage, and one in
which the body is displayed like a piece of meat in a butcher shop
window. In the first case, the viewer's response is 'Yes, that is
beautiful - God does great work'. In the latter case, the viewer's
response is 'I want that'.

In short, if you are truly concerned about lust in regard to viewing
nude figures in art, then the battle is half won already. Trust your
judgment, and be watchful of your own thoughts. Where truly great,
classical, historically significant art is involved, I don't think even
children need be' cocooned and shielded as much as one might think.
Most children likely have a much saner and simpler response to these
things than we give them credit for. If you have concerns for kids,
look things over for yourself first, but don't get too wound up over
them seeing this or that body part, in the right context.

"

(Via JIMMY AKIN.ORG.)

Free Speech...

isn't an Anglican value?

Rowan Williams has been a ninny for a long time......: "Rowan Williams has been a ninny for a long time...

But now his ninnyhood threatens free speech in Britain. He wants a law against 'thoughtless and ... cruel styles of speaking and acting.' From the well-meaning attempts of fools to legislate virtue, dear Lord, deliver us."

(Via Catholic and Enjoying It!.)

It's baaaack....

Actually, it just won't go away. Nixon declared victory in Vietnam and promptly decamped. But declaring victory in the abortion controversy and wishing it out of existence isn't working at all:

Everyone’s hip to the times but the baby killers: "

And yet, beneath the veneer of tribal sisterly celebration, I did manage to detect a strain of underlying tension. It came out on those few occasions when one of the speakers made oblique allusion to that taboo question in the pro-choice camp: How late is too late?This should be a question of special interest to anyone who’s managed to escape the tribal polarization of the abortion debate. Squeezed between the two tribes are a few of us (including me) who think a woman should have a broad right to abort her fetus when it is an insentient bundle of cells, but are appalled by the fact that Canada — alone among industrialized nations — permits ‘socially motivated’ abortion in the second and even third trimesters. Yet in a full day of presentations purporting to comprehensively evaluate the state of abortion in this country, no one at this symposium took on this one disturbing, and truly unique, feature of our country’s legal landscape.Even in the Q&A, the issue came up only twice — and then, only obliquely. The first came when an audience member bemoaned the fact that most doctors in Western nations wouldn’t perform abortions after 24 weeks — and asked, with apparently genuine curiosity, why this was so. The panelist who answered, National Abortion Federation director Dawn Fowler, refused to supply a reason, merely demurring that ‘It will be interesting to have the physicians appearing later today [as speakers] comment on that.’ (None did.) A few hours later, a male student rose during the Q&A to broach the issue indirectly with legendary Canadian abortion doctor Garson Romalis. The student asked whether late-term unborn children should be supplied pain-killers as part of the abortion procedure. Romalis (who, by way of background, has survived two murder attempts by pro-life fanatics) dismissed any evidence that aborted fetuses feel pain, and with it the entire issue, in a single sentence. And that was it. The interesting thing is that several of the symposium speakers — most notably, University of Toronto Law School professor Joanna Erdman — vigorously assured the audience that very few abortions take place in Canada ‘for social reasons’ beyond 20 weeks, and none beyond 24 weeks. No doubt, the data show this to be true. But why was this fact so important as to deserve emphasis? Similarly, why did Gavigan take such pains to dismiss anecdotes of women having abortions for capricious reasons (e.g., looking good in a bikini on an upcoming vacation) as ‘preposterous misogynistic fables.’ If it is really true that ‘the unborn child and the pregnant mother speak with one voice,’ then presumably they have the right to assume a voice that is selfish and vain. If the ‘dominant ideology of the unborn child’ is nothing but a misogynistic construct invented by patriarchal moralists, why does it matter if that so-called unborn child weighs one pound — or five? Why strike such defensive postures against a issue that no one in the room would even discuss?   (National Post)

We are living in amazing times in Canada.  I would never have believed that, in 2008, abortion would be back on the front burner as a legitimate social and moral question.  But, reading the news reports and columns, it is clear that there is a definite shift in blindly accepting the feminist dogmas of yesteryear. This isn’t your typical ‘choice’ culture anymore.  People have gathered their collective minds and are starting to ask: ‘Um…choice? Choice to do what?’

The pro-aborts tried to convince Canadians that the issue was ‘settled’.  After all, didn’t Jean Chretien and Paul Martin tell us that?  Henry Morgentaller and his shills has been telling us that for the past 20 years.  Maybe it’s just me and my personal sensitivities on this issue, but it seems to me that they are telling us that more frequently and much louder in the last year or so.  It’s like they have to raise their voices because they sense, quite correctly and understandably, that they are starting to lose influence and slowly losing the debate.  It reminds me of the old Communists under the thumb of Josef Stalin. When uncle Joe would laugh, he would look around the table to be sure that everyone was laughing too.  Rumors had it that if you were the last to laugh, you would be on a train to Siberia the next day.  It’s kind of like that with the abortionists and the Death and Dismemberment Department of  Reproductive Health.  After blathering on about the supreme euphemism of ‘choice’, they look around the audience to ensure that smiley happy, faces stare back at them, knowing that today’s audiences are more discriminating, thoughtful, and informed about the development of the unborn child.

They are also not buying the refusal of the abortion lobby to answer the question of late term abortions.  The pro-aborts aren’t talking about that one, understandably. Or, if they are, they are saying that it doesn’t exist. Of course, that is a lie just like abortion is a lie.  A few years back Margaret Sommerville cited a Stats Can statistic of there being 230 or so late term abortions in Canada.  When I ran in the last provincial election, I was able to get my hands on some information on late-term abortions.   Not only are we doing them here in this country, we are paying the United States to do it when we cannot. Here is the blog entry from my campaign log with the relevant links:

Our provincial government does that sort of thing for about 60 women a year in this province at a cost of $400K (click here). Tiller would have done the job and Ontario taxpayers would have picked up the tab. It would have spared the champagne liberals across the province a lot of discomfort in explaining how this situation is all that different from the hundreds of late-term abortions that occur every year in this country (click here). I believe we are at a point in this culture where our opponents have really and truly lost their collective minds. I sincerely doubt that there would be much outcry at all if we were to legalize infanticide — provided, of course, that we did it within say, 30 days after birth. I think that’s a reasonable compromise, don’t you?

The jig is up for the abortion propagandists in Canada. Their days are numbered one way or another. They are getting old (like Morgentaller who is 84 years old), they are losing the arguments, they are being undermined by the stark reality of the unborn child that science is clearly demonstrating, and they have fewer and fewer recruits.  Oh yes, one more factor. While pro-lifers have been popping them out like like-minded rabbits these past 20 years, the pro-aborts have been skinning and disposing of their own.  One need not a crystal ball to see the future, just an ability to count and read the signs of the times.  Everyone is beginning to read the writing on the wall, except the pro-aborts and their ideological buddies of a bygone era.  And, like the past anti-life comrads, they’ll suffer the same fate and the full judgement of history.

"

(Via SoCon Or Bust.)

Neuroscience and the Brain...

has almost nothing to do with this:

This video would have had me in stitches ...: "

... were I not'already in stitches. Ha!

The 'Tale of Two Brains''— male vs. female'— arrived in my e-mail today from a priest. Be careful not to watch it while eating or drinking anything that may damage your computer screen.

"

(Via The Dawn Patrol.)

Common Sense in Philosophy

is so rare. Ask Chesterton (and Mark Shea) why:

Rubbish: "

Seventy years ago, Chesterton remarked:

Since the modern world began in the sixteenth century, nobodys system of philosophy has really corresponded to everybodys sense of reality: to what, if left to themselves, common men would call common sense.

read more

"

(Via New Advent World Watch.)

Is the News Leaking Into the MSM?

Mind you, does the Calgary Herald count as MSM?

Thanks to Free Mark Steyn!

Constantine, Christians and the Cross

Sometimes our hard-won facts turn out to be less than true. I, also, read, many times, that prior to Constantine's vision, Christians didn't use the cross or crucifix in their iconography. It seems that may not be true after all:

Cross Currents: "

Picked up some kind of bug and have been feeling (in the words of my 4yo daughter Treesie) ‘Gwoss.’ Even with such minor discomfort, a Christian’s thoughts naturally turn to the cross. And it seems more and more likely that it’s always been that way. Consider the recent discoveries:

* In Syria, archeologists have found two cruciform cemeteries from the third century (here and here).

* In the Basque region, archeologists unearthed a town that had been covered by a third-century landslide; and in one home they found a crudely drawn crucifix, complete with corpus.

* Scholars have begun to reconsider the dating of some gems engraved with the crucifix, placing them, too, in the third century.

* Larry Hurtado has catalogued the occurrences of staurograms and other crypto-crosses in manuscripts as far back as the early second century. He says that the staurogram — usually an embellished rendering of the Greek letters tau or chi or the Coptic ankh — ‘obviously refers to the crucifixion/cross of Jesus, and so (along with the abundant textual evidence) reflects an importance given to Jesus’ crucifixion in Christian faith/piety, from at least as early as the late second century.’

All this, of course, runs counter to what I learned in school, and probably to what most people learn in school today. It has, for generations, been commonplace to say that there were no crosses before Constantine. The standard current textbook in Christian archeology states flatly that there was ‘no place in the third century for a crucified Christ, or a symbol of divine death.’

If cruciform figures appeared in digs, they were dismissed as random scratches, mere geometric ornamentation, or later ‘contaminations’ in early strata. The argument followed a circular logic:

1. We know there were no crosses before 300 because we’ve never found any.

2. When we seem to find crosses, we know they’re late or not really crosses, because of course there WERE no crosses before 300.

3. Lather, rinse, repeat.

Hurtado points out that preachers and letter-writers in those early years often refer to the cross of Christ. Other scholars point to this very early anti-Christian graffito, which portrays a donkey hanging on a cross. It’s unlikely that bigots would seize upon that symbol unless it had already been widely used and cherished by the Christians.

My money’s with the vanguard in this controversy. It seems that when we suffer and we survey that wondrous cross, we’re very likely doing what the earliest Christians did.

"

(Via New Advent World Watch.)

Speciesism?

This is a cute turn of an otherwise silly idea:

A Winning Argument on Cloning?: "

‘Farming cloned livestock should be banned because the animals suffer too much, EU ethics experts said last night.’

Meanwhile, in the USA, there is no restriction-at all-on human cloning, be it for so-called ‘therapeutic’ purposes (i.e. where a human being is cloned and then the clone is dismembered for parts) or for reproductive purposes (that is, in America it’s A-OK to clone-for-babies). But maybe once we see that the animals suffer too much we’ll do something about the humans-we wouldn’t want to be speciesists, after all.

"

(Via First Things.)

Reasoned Debate

is, sadly, so rare in the abortion controvesy:

Peter Kreeft debated abortion...: "

... at the University of Colorado with Dr. David Boonin this past Friday. Catholic News Agency reports on the well-attended event:

A Catholic-sponsored debate about the ethics of abortion packed hundreds into an auditorium on the University of Colorado campus in Boulder, CO this past Friday night. The debate featured two prominent philosophy professors—Drs. Peter Kreeft and David Boonin—who defended their views on the ethics of abortion.

Listeners filled all 288 seats of the auditorium, while others sat in the aisles.' Still more sat in the overflow seating in the basement hallway, and even crowded the stairs leading up from the basement, a total audience easily surpassing 400 in number.

The debate, sponsored by the Thomas Aquinas Institute for Catholic Thought, addressed the question 'Is abortion morally justifiable?'' Dr. Peter Kreeft, of Boston College, answered that it could never be while Dr. David Boonin of the University of Colorado argued that abortion was sometimes a moral choice.' Both professors offered many reasons and counterarguments defending their position.

The professors are both prominent in their field and in the public eye.' Kreeft has authored more than 45 books dedicated to defending Christian beliefs and understanding suffering, morality, philosophy, life, and God.' Dr. Boonin’s 2003 book ‘A Defense of Abortion’ won an honorable mention from the American Philosophical Association.' Boonin is also the chair of the University of Colorado's philosophy department.

Read the entire story.

• Introduction to Three Approaches to Abortion | Peter Kreeft
• Ignatius Insight author page for Peter Kreeft

"

(Via Insight Scoop | The Ignatius Press Blog.)

I Didn't Tell You Everything

about The Spiritual Brain: it's subtitle is A Neuroscientist's Case for the Existence of the Soul. Apropos that, here is an article:

Neuroscientist: Most opposition to new science ideas comes from fundamentalism within science: "Well, another non-materialist neuroscientist has just been sighted.

Edward F. Kelly, lead author of Irreducible Mind, writes at the Rowman blog (sponsored by publishers Rowman and Littlefield),

The word ‘fundamentalism’ probably evokes for most of us only images of bomb-wielding Islamic terrorists and other examples of religious extremism, but fundamentalism exists within science as well. When scientific opinion hardens into dogma it becomes scientism, which is essentially a secular faith and no longer science. Galileo was persecuted by the Inquisition, but in modern times the main opposition to new scientific ideas has derived not from religious orthodoxies but from other scientists for whom contemporary opinion established the limits of the possible.

Consider in this light the question of post-mortem survival. The notion that aspects of mind and personality survive bodily death is central to the world’s great religions yet scorned as impossible by present-day establishment science. But few participants in this contentious debate have any inkling that there exists a large scientific literature collectively suggesting that at least some of us, under largely unknown conditions and for some unknown period of time, do in fact survive. The primary threat to this interpretation, ironically, has nothing to do with the quality of the evidence—problems of fraud, credulity, errors of observation or memory, and the like—but with the difficulty of excluding non-survivalist interpretations based solely upon supernormal (‘psi’-based or parapsychological) processes involving living persons. The voluminous evidence for such processes includes both spontaneous cases and experimental studies, and in my opinion has long since passed the threshold where competent persons who take the trouble to study it in depth and with an open mind will routinely conclude that these things exist as facts of nature. Indeed, future generations of historians, philosophers, and sociologists will undoubtedly make a good living trying to understand why it took so long for scientists in general to accept this conclusion.

Kelly is Research Professor in the Department of Psychiatry and Neurobehavioral Sciences at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville.

Hat Tip: Stephanie West Allen at Brains on Purpose"

(Via Mindful Hack.)

Now That's a Reductio Ad Absurdam!

Try this bit of moderation on for size:

Roe v Wade: 35 years of legal baby killing: "In remembrance of National Right To Life Day, celebrated every January 22nd on the annual anniversary of the Supreme Court decision legalizing abortion, Roe vs. Wade (1973), and in honor of the tens thousands of protestors who annually drive or fly to Washington, D.C., to march from the Washington Monument to the Supreme Court (sometimes in the freezing cold), lobby senators, and get themselves ignored by the media in favor of the eight or nine abortion-rights activists who manage to come out and get themselves interviewed on national television, it seemed only decent and proper to dig out my annual 'thought for the day' -- a parody of tortured pro-choice logic by Princeton professor, Robert P. George, which might be entitled:

'In short, I am moderately 'pro-choice.''
I am personally opposed to killing abortionists. However, inasmuch as my personal opposition to this practice is rooted in sectarian (Catholic) religious belief in the sanctity of human life, I am unwilling to impose it on others who may, as a matter of conscience, take a different view. Of course, I am entirely in favor of policies aimed at removing the root causes of violence against abortionists. Indeed, I would go as far as supporting mandatory one-week waiting periods, and even non-judgmental counseling, for people who are contemplating the choice of killing an abortionist. I believe in policies that reduce the urgent need some people feel to kill abortionists while, at the same time, respecting the rights of conscience of my fellow citizens who believe that the killing of abortionists is sometimes a tragic necessity--not a good, but a lesser evil. In short, I am moderately 'pro-choice.'

[Dr. Robert P. George is George McCormick Professor of Jurisprudence at Princeton University, a graduate of Harvard Law School, and earned his doctorate in philosophy of law at Oxford University. He currently sits on the President's Council of Bioethics and is author of numerous books on constitutional law and jurisprudence. Just in case anyone is still wondering, the foregoing statement is not intended to be taken at face value, but as a parody and reductio ad absurdum refutation of the fallacious reasoning employed pervasively by proponents of a 'pro-choice' position favoring 'abortion rights.' I offer this explanation not to insult the reader's intelligence, but only because of having learned the importance of covering one's bases: several years ago, I heard that when the faculty, staff, and students of a Lutheran college received emails containing George's quotation, a President's cabinet meeting was called to address the issue, and, the dean of students, frantic to ensure the institution's political correctness, sent out a follow-up message indicating that the views of the original email did not reflect the views of the institution and that the college did not endorse the killing of abortionists! Well guess what? Neither do I or Bobby George! This isn't rocket science.]

Schedule of EWTN's live streaming of March for Life 2008 events (all times EST):


Of related interest: See on site photo coverage by American Papist
[Hat tip to T.P.]"

(Via Musings of a Pertinacious Papist.)

Who?

I should have specified which van Eyck I was referring to in the previous post: Jan. He of this master work:

Hope for the Aging Brain

I'm currently ploughing through The Spiritual Brain by Mario Beauregard, Ph.D. & Denyse O'Leary. Excellent! Hope to finish it tonight so I can get back to studying. Cimabue, Giotto and van Eyck are waiting for me.

Who is Richard Warman?

And why does the Human Rights Commission agree with him all the time?

(On the other hand a 100% conviction rate must mean the Human Rights Commissions are perfectly effective, right?)

Coming Soon

Our American cousins are watching developments here with some concern. Can't wait to see how those hate crime laws work out, eh?

Human Rights vs. Free Speech: "

David Warren at Real Clear Politics has a very good article on Canada’s ‘human rights commissions,’ which put people on trial for saying things that these human rights commissions dislike. That’s a bit glib, but only a bit. Ezra Levant published the Danish cartoons on the Prophet Mohammed to show his readers that all the fuss was overblown. He is now on trial before an Alberta human rights tribunal. Catholic Insight, a monthly magazine published in Toronto, is being prosecuted by a man in Edmonton for upholding the Church’s teaching on marriage and homosexual behavior. Even if he differs with the content or tone of such publications, an American can be grateful for the freedom of speech. Not so for Canadians, it would appear. Warren describes the situation as follows:

There are other meandering cases in the works, or that were in the works, often against Internet website owners or the contributors to their online forums. It is almost impossible to get clear information about these. In the notification process, the recipient of a human rights complaint need not be told who the complainant is, or what he is alleging. The recipient is just left to guess for a while, as the bureaucratic machinery of quasi-legal ‘justice’ proceeds at its glacial pace. Truth and rumours become hard to distinguish in this kafkaesque environment.

These human rights commissions are worth keeping an eye on. Though a healthy respect for the freedom of speech exists in most of America, let us hope that these ‘human rights’ commissions can be quarantined and eliminated in Canada lest they spread south.

"

(Via First Things.)

Memories

are rapidly fading. I'm sure the version of A Certain Justice that I was vaguely remembering was the tv version. P.D. James is a brilliant writer. I'm glad I read this one.

Where Do I Go to Become a "Human Rights Expert"?

It's not just here in Canada (not Soviet Canuckistan) that there are problems with the Human Rights Industry. I can hear the sardonic laughter of George Orwell...

Freedom of Speech and Wisdom

What Mark said (Sapienza being Italian for Wisdom, by the bye):

Communion and Liberation on Sapienza's Cretinous Move to Shout Down Benedict in...: "Communion and Liberation on Sapienza's Cretinous Move to Shout Down Benedict in the Name of Freedom of Thought

It's' best that the nice people at CL write these things, cuz I would just issue a press release titled 'Academic Black Shirts on the March!', call them a bunch of goose-stepping fascistic maroons, and be done with it."

(Via Catholic and Enjoying It!.)

Freedom of Speech Is Not Newsworthy

especially if you're in the process of becoming an unperson. The Blogosphere has been alive with coverage of the tribulations of some of those being prosecuted via the HRC's.

One of the defendants from one of the cases explains chill as it compares to libel chill. Various overviews have been offered. And a petition calling for human rights commissions in Canada to be suspended until a review can be conducted is here.

While I've been following these and similar cases over the years, today's post was precipitated by this:

Biggest story breaks, Media no where to be seen: "

It’s been a busy few days since my ‘human rights’ interrogation on Friday afternoon. As of yesterday, the video clips I uploaded were viewed nearly 200,000 times, making them the 5th most watched ‘channel’ on YouTube. I’d like to thank the blogosphere for covering a story that has been under-reported by the mainstream media, and I’d like to thank generous visitors for their financial support for our legal defence via PayPal. (Ezra Levant.com)

Yet another shining example of how useless and irrelevant the mainstream media is given their ‘coverage’ of it. All I have to say is thank the Lord for the internet.  It’s a sobering thought to think where freedom loving people would be without it. It’s not surprising that the Commission sought to restrict Ezra’s video postings of their steroid pumped, Rodney King like ‘can’t-we-all-just-get-along’ court.

Yet another disaster and embarassment for these chumps. Why do they even bother calling themselves journalists?  After a while the label gets a little tiring and hard to believe.

"

(Via SoCon Or Bust.)

Christmas Reading

Just so you know it wasn't all Stuffing washed down with spiced rum and eggnog:

A Christmas Guest by Anne Perry is set in Victorian England with some characters from her other murder mysteries set in that era. The protagonist, a cantankerous Grandmama, solves the mystery and grows a not a little in doing so.

Jerusalem Inn by Martha Grimes also uses an established character, Richard Jury of Scotland Yard. Several murders over the snow-bound days leading to Christmas are solved by Jury and his friend Melrose Plant.

I'm now working on A Certain Justice by P.D. James, my favourite mystery writer. Unfortunately, I have the distinct feeling of dèjá vu reading this. Either this is the second time around or there was a tv adaptation. Never mind, I can't remember who did it or how it was solved. Old age has it's compensations...

I'm Dreaming...

of the White Christmas we got, unexpectedly, Christmas Day. It's fairly rare up here, once every nine years or so. And we're being snowed on again. Our green Winters may be a thing of the past. Last year was colder and whiter than those of recent memory.

How Do You Feel About That?

This, for me, sums up the modern catechesis in the RCIA program. (I was part of the team, not a catechumen.) So this article and others ring ever-so-true for me:

"Now do you understand what Rich meant?": "Susan/Eulogos, one of my most insightful commenters, took a look at the article on the Cincinnati RCIA conference about which I posted the other day.

She does not like what she saw.

There was not one word in this article about teaching the content of the Catholic faith. The Catechism was not mentioned. The creeds were not mentioned. Dealing with typical difficulties and objections was not mentioned. A question of minimum standards for knowledge was [not] mentioned. No discussion of how much content was necessary or appropriate for people of different educational backgrounds. No discussion of what people are actually agreeing to when they assent to 'everything the Church teaches.' (Or to saying that everything the Church teaches is revealed by God, which ought to be the same thing.) No sessions about how to guide those who can accept 'everything except Papal Infallibility' or 'everything except the Immaculate Conception' or 'everything except no contraception.' I would think that these sorts of subjects would need to be discussed by RCIA people. But instead, according to the article, it was all about what parts of the RCIA program 'mean to me.' Suggesting an echo of RCIA programs which are all about 'What being a Catholic means to me?' (You know, 'For me, it is all about being part of a big family' or 'Its all about the community.' etc etc.)

"

(Via Ten Reasons.)

Cherchez

Now I understand why I never took up French cooking:

Six injured by exploding fondue: "Three people are taken to hospital with serious burns after a gas-powered fondue set explodes."

(Via BBC News.)

What Child is This?

I found myself humming this carol yesterday at work. So, this article seems an appropriate way to continue preparations for the coming celebrations:

Looking for Mary in Christmas Carols: "It’s Christmas, so we’re singing carols. OK, it’s not Christmas, it’s really Advent, and “carol” has a particular set of musicological meanings that don’t have anything to do with Christmas–but we call almost any tune we sing in December a “carol” (even that culinary chestnuts song) and the speaker at the stand where I pump [...]"

(Via FIRST THINGS: On the Square.)

Christmas Preparations

The tree is up and the Mrs. has the house fully decorated (not an easy task). So let's do some reading that will prepare us spiritually and intellectually:

The Magi and Their Scientific Discovery: ""

(Via New Advent World Watch.)

Fat-free?

Maybe all that BMI stuff is oversold. There's at least some evidence that being "overweight" could be good for you.



Thanks to William E. on ROFTERS (more about them here).

A Day Late...

Shame on me for neglecting one of my favourite saints: belated Happy Nicholmas to all!

Thanks to Rachel Watkins at Heart Mind & Strength.

Up for Air

While Life hasn't been actually overwhelming, I have been trying to do some catching up in the Philosophy course. I have been frustrated by a deficient conceptual vocabulary (how's that for a mouthful?). So just before the second Mid-term I borrowed several books from the University Library.

I quickly finished John Finnis' Fundamentals of Ethics the weekend before the exam. I purchased it from Amazon(.com) and hope to have it in my library in January. First impression: it's a good primer in a modern version of Natural Law Ethics.

This family of ethical systems barely rated a mention in our course, and then simply as Command Law ethics. You know, God says it so we have to do it. The strong implication is that this a purely religiously based ethical system. Cicero would have been surprised.

Having seen Alasdair Macintyre mentioned around the web, and particularly in First Things, I had a go at After Virtue. That was a heavier slog, not a weekend skim, at all, at all. It's interesting that the authors of the course textbook, when discussing various modern proponents of Virtue Ethics (only a reading from Aristotle is given), don't mention Professor Macintyre. It makes me wonder if his (subsequent to the first edition of his magnum opus) conversion to Catholicism compromised their evaluation of his philosophical integrity. Does such bias exist in academia? Perish the thought!

And now I'm going through Gomez-Lobo's Morality and the Human Goods. It's sub-title is An Introduction to Natural Law Ethics. This book I can highly recommend for the interested, but philosophically challenged, reader. It has a good conversational style and keeps the reasoning clear and easy to follow. He shows awareness of all the modern ethical theories and appears to deal with them fairly. And he equips the attentive reader with the vocabulary to deal with some of major ethical problems we moderns have to deal with.

And my copy of Finnis' Natural Law and Natural Rights arrived about a week ago. I hope to get into that before my next Philosophy course starts, probably in January.

Now I have to get off philosophy (the final is in a little over a week from now) and read P.D. James' The Children of Men.

Good Reading!

In the Interim

Here's some Bioethical material to consider while I get ready for work. I'll blog a bit tomorrow, first of four days off.

The Case Against Abortion: An Interview with Dr. Francis Beckwith: "

The Case Against Abortion: An Interview with Dr. Francis Beckwith, author of Defending Life | Carl E. Olson | December 5, 2007




Dr. Francis Beckwith (personal website), Associate Professor of Philosophy at Baylor University, made

news this past May when he publicly announced that he had returned to the
Catholic Church after spending over thirty years in
Evangelical Protestantism.
But Dr. Beckwith has been receiving attention more recently for his latest
book,
Defending Life: A Moral and Legal Case Against Abortion Choice (Cambridge University Press, 2007), a thorough and
impressive work that engages and responds to the many arguments—both
popular and scholarly—given by abortion rights advocates.





Rev. Richard John Neuhaus of First Things stated of Defending Life:
'By a masterful marshalling of the pertinent arguments and a civil engagement
with the counter-arguments, Beckwith makes a convincing case for law and social
policy based on reason and natural rights rather than the will to power.' And
in a November 26, 2007, column in America magazine, noted bioethicist Fr. John F. Kavanaugh, S.J.,
professor of philosophy at St. Louis University, wrote that Dr. Beckwith 'charitably and
thoroughly engages those who oppose him. Defending Life is a model of how a pro-life position is effectively
mounted. One might hope that defenders of abortion would as thoughtfully engage
his arguments. I at least hope that our own bishops will take up this work and,
upon reading it, offer it to every parish library in the country. They might
also request that lay leaders, especially physicians, lawyers, teachers and
business persons, enlist such a book in their efforts not only to form their
own consciences, but also to inform and elevate the somewhat cheapened and
knee-jerk moral discourse over the issue of abortion.'



Carl E. Olson, editor of Ignatius Insight, recently interviewed Dr. Beckwith
and spoke with him about his book, the state of the pro-life movement, and how
those who oppose abortion can better take a stand against the culture of death.



Read the entire interview...

"

(Via Insight Scoop | The Ignatius Press Blog.)

Something to Ponder

while I'm studying the arguments for and against the death penalty:

Recommended Reading: The Heart Has its Reasons: Examining the Strange Persistence of the American Death Penalty
Studies in Law, Politics and Society, Vol. 42, No. 1, 2008
Abstract:

The debate about the future of the death penalty often focuses on
whether its supporters are animated by instrumental or expressive
values, and if the latter, what values the penalty does in fact
express, where those values originated, and how deeply entrenched they
are. In this article I argue that a more explicit recognition of the
emotional sources of support for and opposition to the death penalty
will contribute to the clarity of the debate. The focus on emotional
variables reveals that the boundary between instrumental and expressive
values is porous; both types of values are informed (or uninformed) by
fear, outrage, compassion, selective empathy and other emotional
attitudes. More fundamentally, though history, culture and politics are
essential aspects of the discussion, the resilience of the death
penalty cannot be adequately understood when the affect is stripped
from explanations for its support. Ultimately, the death penalty will
not die without a societal change of heart.

(Via Mirror of Justice.)

Confession Time

I've had a sneaking suspicion that the ESCR advocates had more than one mad scientist in their ranks. It's doubtful that this issue will get into our discussions in the class; there's too much on our plate now.

Why NOT Embryonic Research?: "

I heard about this new stem cell research yesterday on NPR, which broadcast a brief debate on the subject between Sean Tipton, president of the Coalition for the Advancement of Medical
Research, and Richard Doerflinger, deputy director of Pro-Life
Activities for the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops.

Basically, Dr. Doerflinger takes this advance as Great News in that soon there may be no scientific (let alone moral) justification to continue controversial research on human embryonic stem cells, whereas Dr. Tipton thinks such research should continue - just in case. He sees stem cell research as a race to the finish line (his analogy) and whatever it takes to get there is fine, even though 'some people' have moral problems with it.

It wasn't so much his point of view that puzzled me (after all, you can't expect someone who doesn't believe in moral absolutes to behave as if they do*) but the way he defended it; So, why should we continue with controversial research, even in the face of grave moral misgivings? Because 'we live in a pluralistic society'.

H'okay...

Now, I'm sure Dr. Tipton could give a better, more well-rounded defense than that, if pressed, but tho whole idea (very popular, of late) that a 'pluralistic society' must allow scientists to pursue 'whatever works' is just freaky.' Never mind advanced ethical philosophy, has Dr. Tipton never seen Frankenstein or Them or even The Hideous Sun Demon? Hollywood had this all sussed many decades ago... there are Some Things that Man was Not Meant to Tamper With.

And, the question must be asked; if Moral Pluralism is the standard, the foundational dogma of our modern society, then what is NOT to be allowed, and why? Aren't all ethical frameworks equally - that is subjectively - valid? Why NOT eugenics? Why NOT a genetically modified warrior race? Why NOT chemical and biological weapons?

The natural law would proscribe all these things on the basis that they are offenses against human dignity. Pluralism might find them all wrong now (because most people find them morally repugnant, even if they can't say why), but there can be no guarantee about the future. If most people' - or even if enough of the right people - become okay with it at some point, well, we can expect these kinds of examples of the New, Improved Dynamic Morality.

'How beautious mankind is! O brave new world: That has such people in't!'.

*This touches on a recent mammoth combox debate on morality and ethics. There is this idea that one may arrive at a workable moral framework in a number of ways and that there will be little practical difference in the end. But that is not true. Toss out moral absolutes and the divergences in ethical philosophy and practice are profound and immediate.

"

(Via JIMMY AKIN.ORG.)

Reading?

Yes, I have managed a little reading of late. At bedtime, I've been going through P.D. James' Devices and Desires. Murder mysteries are a favourite of mine, but she raises the genre to the level of serious literature. I've borrowed The Children of Men for my next read.

And over the weekend, I read John Finnis' Fundamentals of Ethics. It's a bit of a slog for a quick read, but I need a more sophisticated conceptual vocabulary. One of the possible questions on the mid-term involved constructing an argument about whether or not voluntary active euthanasia should be legal. It took quite a bit of thinking to come up with an argument (nine premises and a final conclusion) that seemed doable. I was planning to go against the Professor's recommended strategy: liberty of the individual takes precedence, so use a slippery slope argument if you oppose the legality of euthanasia.

Since he left open the possibility that Virtue Theory might have an argument against euthanasia, I tried reconstructing the argument, based loosely on what I read here. In a way, it's too bad that question didn't come up. I put so much effort into it. On the other hand, it was long and involved. And I barely finished the exam on time as it was. C'est la guerre.

MId-Term

So I survived the exam this morning. It's mildly interesting that the two greatest philosophers were not mentioned in this Moral Philosophy course, so far, at least:

The Two Most Important Philosophers Who Ever Lived: "

The Two Most Important
Philosophers Who Ever Lived | Peter Kreeft | The Introduction to
Socrates Meets Descartes: The Father of Philosophy Analyzes the Father of Modern
Philosophy's Discourse on Method




Introduction



This book is one in a series of Socratic explorations of some of the Great
Books. Books in this series are
intended to be short, clear, and non-technical,
thus fully understandable by beginners. They also introduce (or review)
the basic questions in the fundamental divisions of philosophy (see the


chapter titles): metaphysics, epistemology, anthropology, ethics, logic,
and method. They are designed both for classroom use and for educational
do-it-yourselfers. The 'Socrates Meets . . .' books can be read and understood
completely on their own, but each is best appreciated after reading the
little classic it engages in dialogue.



The setting – Socrates and the author of the Great Book meeting in
the afterlife – need not deter readers who do not believe there is
an afterlife. For although the two characters and their philosophies are
historically real, their conversation, of course, is not and requires
a 'willing suspension of disbelief '. There is no reason the skeptic cannot
extend this literary belief also to the setting.




This excerpt is the Introduction to Socrates
Meets Descartes.

---

Socrates and Descartes are probably the
two most important philosophers who ever lived, because they are the two who
made the most difference to all philosophy after them. Socrates is often called
'the Father of Philosophy' and Descartes is called 'the Father of Modern
Philosophy.' The two of them stand at the beginning of the two basic
philosophical options: the classical and the modern.



At least seven features unite these two
philosophers and distinguish them from all others.


Continue reading...

"

(Via Insight Scoop | The Ignatius Press Blog.)

Some Animals Are More Equal Than Others

With apologies to George Orwell. One of the remaining topics we will take up in Moral Philosophy will be Animal Rights. So this article is interesting.

China

Not the kind you get out for Thanksgiving Dinner. (Felicitations to our American friends who are about to celebrate.) Rather the country and it's future: bleak. Try growing an economy while the population shrinks: can't be done over the medium and long-term. This has been an observation of mine for years (as my poor, harassed daughters will attest). This article was an excuse to renew the assertion here.

I'm getting the usual pre-test jitters (Mid-Term #2). I'll try to get through the paralysis and do creditably well on Monday. Anyway, that's the excuse for the lull in blogging.

The two issues to be dealt with on the mid-term are Abortion and Euthanasia, as my readers no doubt have noticed. I'm at least better prepared than the average fresh-out-of-high-school classmate, in that I've done reading and thinking about these topics for some decades. But formulating and properly critiquing arguments to a freshman standard is a challenge. But that's the point of an education, right? (To be intellectually challenged, I mean.)

Fat-free?

Maybe all that BMI stuff is oversold. There's at least some evidence that being "overweight" could be good for you.

Thanks to William E. on ROFTERS (more about them here).

Will Women Be More "Valuable" in the Future?

The gendercide is going apace and it's consequences are looming in many countries.

Value-Free Science?

This Lifesite News article might provoke some concern.

Acrimony

in the public abortion debate is one reason not to keep blogging about it. But, from the anti-abortion perspective, anyway, there is some evidence that there are reasons for the emotional responses:

Head like a hole: "

At what point does the state of ignorance end or the manifestation of wickedness begin within each individual who comes to abhor anything considered Pro-life? When or how does one cross-over from a distorted sense of altruistic compassion into the realm of the wicked? A New York Times article which featured an abortionist named Dr. Susan Wicklund brought this to mind.

While the article starts off with a somewhat negative connotation towards abortion, it eventually becomes apparent that the NY Times is setting Wicklund up as some sort of twisted mother of mercy. It’s the times! To me, there’s something even more so wicked when those in positions of authority and trust employ techniques of establishing a false sense of security and trust, only to draw victims into the corruption of their lies and deceit. Whether or not she believes in her own lies is of little concern to me, as opposed to the prevalence of liars who perpetuate and create the lies and deception which is responsible for a crime which is one of the most despicable acts one human could ever inflict on to another. Among her claims to promote a normalcy for abortion:

40% of American women have abortions.

More common that the removal of wisdom teeth.

Abortion restrictions are about the control of women, about power, and it’s insulting.

Protesters who regularly appear shouting outside abortion clinics also get abortions.

Abortion give women back their life, their control.

In addition to Susan’s apparent deficiencies simple math, is another example to remember that figures don’t lie, but liars do figure, and yet more proof of funny numbers and protecting sex offenders.

"

(Via COSMOS-LITURGY-SEX.)

Arguments and Logic

Sometimes there is a shorter way to the truth of things. And Comedians sometimes find it. Take Stephen Colbert:

On another night, bioethicist Lee Silver from Princeton visited the show. Colbert told him he believed that science and spirituality could go hand in hand and that all people, embryos included, have souls. Silver begged to differ. He told Colbert that, in the shower, we scrub off thousands of skin cells every day, and that the cells on his arm are human life in the same way that embryos are. To which Colbert responded: “If I let my arm go for a while and didn’t wash it, you’re saying I’d have babies on my arm.” Thank goodness we have comedians to take such arguments to their natural conclusions.

Thanks to Nathaniel Peters at First Things.

Freedom and Virtue

While I'm anxiously awaiting the study outline for our next mid-term, you are invited to consider this:

The Illusion of Freedom Separated from Moral Virtue: "

The Illusion of Freedom Separated from Moral Virtue | Raymond L. Dennehy, University of San Francisco



Editor's Note: This article originally appeared in the Journal of Interdisciplinary
Studies (Vol XIX, 1/2 2007), and is reproduced here by the kind permission of JIS. It won the Oleg Zinam Award for Best
Essay in JIS 2007.

---

This essay proposes that
liberal democracy cannot survive unless a monistic virtue ethics permeates
its culture. A monistic philosophical conception of virtue ethics has its
roots in natural law theory and, for that reason, offers a rationally
defensible basis for a unified moral vision in a pluralistic society. Such
a monistic virtue ethics--insofar as it is a virtue ethics--forms
individual character so that a person not only knows how to act, but
desires to act that way and, moreover, possesses the integration of
character to be able to act that way. This is a crucial consideration, for
immoral choices create a bad character that inclines the individual to
increasingly worse choices. A nation whose members lack moral virtue
cannot sustain its commitment to freedom and equality for
all.






FREEDOM AND VIRTUE






The thesis defended in this
essay is that liberal democracy cannot survive unless a monistic virtue
ethics permeates its culture. Two arguments are given in its support.
First, a monistic philosophical conception of virtue ethics has its roots
in natural law theory and, for that reason, offers a rationally defensible
basis for a unified moral vision in a pluralistic society. Second, a
monistic virtue ethics--insofar as it is a virtue ethics--forms individual
character so that one not only knows how to act, but desires to act that
way and, what is more, possesses the integration of character to be able
to act that way. This is a crucial consideration, for immoral choices
create a bad character that inclines the individual to increasingly worse
choices. A nation whose members lack moral virtue cannot sustain its
commitment to freedom and equality for all.

Read the entire essay...

"

(Via Insight Scoop | The Ignatius Press Blog.)

More of the Same

Alas! I'm still not done with the abortion issue. While I'm pondering some of the pivotal issues (direct/indirect killing; universal human rights/partial temporary rights; the "space traveller" thought experiment) here's something from Ramesh Ponnuru on Thomson:

The philosopher Judith Jarvis Thomson has famously argued that even if human fetuses are persons with rights (as she is willing to concede they are from a fairly early point in development), those rights do not entail an obligation on the part of pregnant women to continue nourishing them. But as I note in the book, this defense is false to the nature of abortion. Perhaps it would work if abortion were a mere eviction from the womb. But the death of the fetus is in nearly every real case the goal of an abortion, and it is always the means to whatever its goal is.

As for the "Not all humans are persons" line of arguing, he says:

Neil Sinhababu...takes the view that not all human organisms are persons with rights, that there are human non-persons—a view I consider both wrong and dangerous. He believes that I am placing too much importance on the humanity of the human fetus. If the right to life attaches to any organism that happens to belong to the human species, he asks, then what would happen if we met intelligent extraterrestrial life? “To ground moral status in biological humanity is to shrug at the enslavement of hobbits, the slaughter of kittens, and the destruction of all life beyond earth.” Nice line—but no. From the premise that all human beings have a right to life it does not follow that all non-human beings lack it. Humanity is a sufficient condition for having the right to life, but not a necessary one. I even mention, in a footnote, that an alien could have the right to life. The key question would be whether those aliens have a rational nature, as humans do. Indeed, my premises would allow for more protection of those aliens than Sinhababu’s theory would. He believes that human beings and other types of beings have value to the extent that they have the immediately exercisable capacity to perform mental functions. That would leave immature or handicapped aliens, hobbits, and humans without protection.

Ponnuru's conclusion is hopeful:

In 1970 and for many years thereafter, advocates of legal abortion portrayed themselves as the party of cool, dispassionate reason. Their opponents were the prisoners of superstition and emotion. Pro-abortionists back then tried—not, I think, well—to argue either that fetuses were not “alive” or “human” or that their killing could be justified philosophically.
Today, they tend with few exceptions either to refuse to engage the argument at all or to retreat behind their feelings and other non-rational defenses. There are, of course, very smart people on the other side of the debate. But I think The Party of Death and the reaction to it demonstrate something else that has changed in the last four decades: The intellectual high ground is now ours.

Read the whole thing (if you can stand pdf).

Thanks to Kevin Miller at HM&S.

Good News and Bad News

"Beer After Exercise May Be Better Than Water, Study Finds". The downside is I have to start exercising again. (Bum shoulder is my excuse, what's yours?)

Thanks to Kevin Miller at Heart, Mind & Strength.

Who Reads More?

Professor Miller of First Things considers a NYT article [log-in required] that effectively praises the price-controls on books in Germany. Miller argues that freer markets better serve the general reading public, even if publishers thereby publish fewer books. (And, thus, criticizing the NYT author's argument.

It's interesting that he uses the parallel of the now largely unregulated air travel industry as an example of good things happening for the consumers. It just reminded me of how unhappy some of the airline employees are now, feeling that their jobs have been degraded in pursuit of the bottom-line lowest price.

In any case, the title question has some ambiguity in it. Apparently there are more books published in Germany than in the U.S., even though the U.S. has four times the population. So do Germans read more than Americans? Or do some Germans (the relatively wealthy) skew the publishing numbers because the effective cartel-pricing imposed by the government, causes competition in otherwise more expensive titles?

Trouble is, I'm still wrestling with some of the pro-abortion arguments. And today we started grappling with euthanasia arguments. No room in this old-style processor for so much input. But it is intriguing.

How to An Create Urban Legend

This counts as a quibble, too, I suppose. "Anti-abortionists are not only lacking in compassion, they're violent", is a frequent theme in the MSM and in Entertainment. One of my favourite shows, Law and Order, gives a fascinating view into the world view of the educated, secular elite that produces so much of our information and entertainment.

The only remotely sympathetic characters that are explicitly religious on these shows are "cool", "hip" priests and nuns, who couldn't inspire religious fervour in anyone, much less real Christians. Just the sort of religious people the elite finds tolerable. All other characters with religious convictions are:

1. neurotic,
2. murderous,
3. unpleasantly, even inhumanly, cold,
4. stupid or ignorant, or
5. some combination of the above

Which tells me that the people producing the shows have never met, or at least never recognized, a well-adjusted, law-abiding, compassionate, intelligent and well-educated Christian. (Muslims generally get a pass from L&O, but that's another story.) From which lack of experience they must conclude that such people don't exist or are very rare.

So, associating anti-abortionism with religious beliefs, they project these characteristics onto the appropriate characters. And burning, bombings, and murders are the result.

And everybody knows that a) anti-abortionists are violent and that, b) they burn and bomb abortion clinics.

Or do they?

Speaking of ancient civilization

I ran across this:

Philosopher thinks polytheism (many gods) would be an improvement - really!: "Here's something you don't see every day: A defence of polytheism. Arguing that 'Mere mortals had a better life when more than one ruler presided from on high', professor emerita Mary Lefkowitz of Wellesley College argues that we should 'Bring back the Greek gods':

The existence of many different gods also offers a more plausible account than monotheism of the presence of evil and confusion in the world. A mortal may have had the support of one god but incur the enmity of another, who could attack when the patron god was away. The goddess Hera hated the hero Heracles and sent the goddess Madness to make him kill his wife and children. Heracles' father, Zeus, did nothing to stop her, although he did in the end make Heracles immortal.

But in the monotheistic traditions, in which God is omnipresent and always good, mortals must take the blame for whatever goes wrong, even though God permits evil to exist in the world he created.

Et cetera. Actually, polytheism was rejected in the Western tradition for two reasons: First, it seemed illogical (irresistible force meets immovable object?). Second, the capricious qualities of the old gods, which Lefkowitz admires, were despised among the people.

Interestingly, during the Christian era, many of the gods found a second career as fairies, goblins, and witches - which doubtless suited them well enough. The opera Tannhauser offers a look at this process.

More generally, I have difficulty with the idea that anyone today would actually BELIEVE polytheism. I wish I could remember the name of the Canadian feminist philosopher who pointed out that problem years ago. Christians actually believe in the Triune God, even though we can't entire grasp the relationships involved in the Trinity. But no one could believe in the same way - in Venus or Mars or Bacchus. They merely represent our own states of mind to ourselves.

And there is a sense in which the pagan gods were never any more than that, even in antiquity. They were not beyond us, they were usually beneath us. So today, a polytheist must be a practical atheist. I do concede Lefkowitz this, however - polytheism is much more fun than atheism, and produces vastly better art and culture. Compare, for example, the monstrosities of totalitarian atheist architecture in the twentieth century with the Parthenon of ancient Greece."

(Via Mindful Hack.)

Quibbles

I've got a few, but please allow me to vent some of the Abortion-related ones. This might make it easier to focus on the euthanasia issues, though I'm expecting some overlap.

One of the recurrent themes I'm picking up in reading the pro-abortion essays--ok, I'd better stop and explain my terminology. While I prefer Pro-Life as a description, it is true that both this and Pro-Choice are rhetorical names. They try to project the positive about their position. Plus there's an unspoken feeling on both sides that abortion names an unpleasant topic and so is best left unmentioned. For the purposes of philosophy I'll restrict myself to pro-abortion to designate those arguing for fewer or no legal restrictions on abortions; and anti-abortion for those favouring greater or almost complete legal restrictions on abortion.

Back to the original point: there's a recurrent theme in pro-abortion arguments, not part of the argument directly, but alluded to again and again: "We're the compassionate ones!" There may, in fact, be some objective basis for this assertion, though it's initially counter-intuitive to me. "We favour killing the unborn because we're such feeling people. Not like those cold, heartless anti-abortionists." This is a rhetorical device and, no doubt, reflects the beliefs of many, even most, pro-abortionists when dealing with their opponents.

The occasion of this complaint, however, is a remark by Warren in her essay, when forced to confront the reality that her argument, to be successful, must also include infanticide:

Throughout history, most societies--from those that lived by gathering and hunting to the highly civilized Chinese, Japanese, Greeks, and Romans--have permitted infanticide...regarding it as a necessary evil. [emphasis added]

Wikipedia limits itself to saying many, rather than most, societies permitted infanticide. So the "everybody did it" element of the premise is suspect. But move on to the emphasized section: I have no knowledge of history to speak of, and certainly none of the practice of infanticide amongst civilized Chinese, Japanese, and Greeks. But I have certainly heard of pater familias amongst the pagan Romans. And so I'm bound to ask: what sources indicate the the Romans (or any of the other civilizations cited) found infanticide a necessary evil? Consider this:

A letter from a Roman citizen to his wife, dating from 1 BC, demonstrates the casual nature with which infanticide was often viewed:

"Know that I am still in Alexandria. [...] I ask and beg you to take good care of our baby son, and as soon as I received payment I shall send it up to you. If you are delivered [before I come home], if it is a boy, keep it, if a girl, discard it." – Naphtali Lewis, Life in Egypt Under Roman Rule.[4].

In some periods of Roman history it was traditional in practice for a newborn to be brought to the pater familias, the family patriarch, who would then decide whether the child was to be kept and raised, or left to death by exposure. The Twelve Tables of Roman law obliged him to put to death a child that was visibly deformed.

It's interesting to note that the major monotheistic religions (Judaism, Christianity, and Islam) all reject infanticide explicitly. That's one reason for Warren to reach back to the pagan past for her civilized examplars. Current examples of legalized infanticide are not presented by Warren, monotheistic or otherwise. And the gendercide going on in India and China currently is happening primarily in the hinterlands, amongst the uneducated and least civilized. But what of the civilized Romans?



This phrase ("regarding it as a necessary evil") seems to me to be a rhetorical phrase that attempts to paint the ancients as both wise (so we'll be persuaded to follow their example) and compassionate (so we can be assured that they were people like us). The evidence for this regret is a little thin on the ground, however. A civilization, such as the Romans, that used crucifixion for non-Romans (always preceded by a scourging that defies description), found entertainment in convicts being killed by wild animals (damnatio ad bestias), and that mandated the exposure of defective newborns, doesn't strike me as one that found infanticide as the least bit evil, though certainly necessary.

Of course, I'm open to persuasion to the contrary if evidence is produced.

When is Enough, Enough?

My first visit to the Sistine Chapel happened in my callow youth. We were in Rome for five days and the visit was coming to an end. So I rushed over to the Vatican Museum, walked quickly through it, passed through the Sistine Chapel on the way out, pausing briefly to look up.

As the years went by, this memory bothered me more and more. So on my second visit, this time with my beloved, I took a book giving some details of the Chapel's frescoes and a small pair of binoculars. After a leisurely stroll through the Museum we moved over to a wall of the Sistine and waited patiently for a bench space to open up. We then sat for twenty minutes, trying to take it all in. I felt much better.

Until today, sigh:

After hours at the Vatican Museums: "

There’s nothing quite like an evening book presentation inside the Vatican Museums. It’s a thrill just to walk through the darkened museum hallways at night, hours after the place has officially closed. Last Tuesday, there was the added spectacle of a thunderstorm raging outside. I headed to the conference hall, strolling past Egyptian mummies, Roman mosaics and rows of imperial busts that came to life with each flash of lightning. It felt like the opening of ‘The Da Vinci Code.’

The book presentation took place under the watchful eye of Augustus in armor on one side and a nude satyr on the other. As I settled in for the inevitable round of speeches, the question occurred to me: Who needs another book on the Sistine Chapel? This one was written by a German Jesuit, Father Heinrich Pfeiffer, who spent nearly 50 years investigating the religious images and symbols of the Sistine frescoes. His thesis turned out to be interesting, though: while modern experts tend to focus on the artistic vision and style of the chapel’s painters, including Michelangelo, the artists actually worked according to quite specific parameters set by papal theologians. As a result, Father Pfeiffer says, the chapel is really a study in Renaissance Christian iconography.

The bonus postscript to the speechifying was a private visit to the Sistine Chapel. As we all stood around craning our necks, Bruno Bartoloni, the longtime Vatican correspondent for Agence France-Presse and Corriere della Sera, took me aside and pointed to a spot halfway up the wall. There, camouflaged in a fresco of drapes, was a rectangular ‘peephole’ used by popes who wanted to watch over liturgies without being seen. Bartoloni, who has visited nearly every square inch of the Vatican’s jumbled geography, said he’d once stood inside the tiny papal hideaway.

It was still raining the next day when I returned to the Sistine Chapel during tourist rush hour. I wanted to see how the Vatican was handling the increasingly huge crowds that pour into the museum. The Sistine, of course, was shoulder-to-shoulder. A U.S. couple told me they had waited an hour and a half in line just to get into the museum; now, standing beneath one of the world’s artistic masterpieces, they felt like they were riding a crowded Roman bus. I don’t think they caught many of the frescoes’ iconographical details.

Back home, they might want to check out Father Pfeiffer’s book,  ‘The Sistine Chapel: A New Vision.’ And those who can’t afford the volume’s high price tag can always view parts of the chapel online at the Vatican’s Web site.

"

(Via New Advent World Watch.)

A Philosophical Approach to Abortion

We've wound up our consideration of philosophical arguments about the ethics of abortion. We're now approaching the sunlit land of euthanasia. Great.



The arguments for the morality of abortion have one common element. They deny that all human beings are persons (rights holders). (Thomson may be an exception, but her position isn't all that popular in pro-abortion circles). Warren uses analogical arguments (thought experiments) to sketch out her particular view of how we can decide who is human and who isn't. Keep in mind that she is a Contractarian, and believes that rights are something we agree to create. She denies, effectively, the truth of: "All Men are Created Equal". In this sense, she is sketching out a possible method for deciding which human beings we can agree are persons [like us], and which are not.



So let's take one of Professor Peter Kreeft's versions (while speaking at Georgetown University, 10/19/06) of the anti-abortion argument, so we can see what it looks like:

1. The life of each individual member of a species, at least mammalians, begins at conception [fertilization].

2. All humans have the right to life because they're all human persons. [We all share human nature, therefore, we all, all things being equal, share the same universal human rights.]

3. The law must protect the most basic human rights of all it's citizens.

______________

4. Therefore, the law should forbid the direct killing of pre-born humans [zygotic, embryonic, and foetal humans] the same as it protects the life of humans after birth [infant. child, adolescent, adult, aged, and dying humans].

Early pro-abortion approaches tried to deny the first premise. But that is uncontroversially true as a scientific fact. The main focus is now on denying the second premise. The rub is that there is no justification for killing humans before birth that doesn't apply equally to infants (and others) after birth. The grisly result of stubbornly defending the intuition that abortions must be justified is the reality that pro-abortion thinkers, to be be consistent, must, with some greater or lesser enthusiasm, embrace infanticide and euthanasia.



And cobbling together a denial of the [moral] humanity of the unborn while trying to stop sex-selection abortions is a feat worthy of a philosophical Rube Goldberg. Maybe some foetuses are more equal than others?