Sunday, August 30, 2009

A Merely Technological "Civilization"

A merely “technological and bureaucratic civilization” – which is what Western Culture becomes without Christianity – will not long remain civilized. First it’s civility and then its dedication to the human dignity of each person will erode and finally succumb to forms of barbarism from which Christianity slowly liberated the pagan world, forms of barbarism made incalculably more destructive by technologies no longer constrained by Christian moral imperatives.

Saturday, August 29, 2009

A random thought upon returning home . . .

"The days are coming," declares the Sovereign LORD, "when I will send a famine through the land-- not a famine of food or a thirst for water, but a famine of hearing the words of the LORD. Men will stagger from sea to sea and wander from north to east, searching for the word of the LORD, but they will not find it." (Amos 8:11-12)
Knowledge untouched by prayer will never achieve the status of truth, however much factual accuracy it might attain. Facts aggregate (Google) without ever acquiring the capacity to nourish -- much less satisfy -- our hunger for truth. Amos' assessment is far truer today than it was in the 8th century before Christ.

Tuesday, August 18, 2009

From Hadley Arkes

Within the orders of Creation living things were higher than the lifeless stars, and among living things the peak would come with those moral beings, who could reason over right and wrong. If Creation has a purpose, life has a purpose, moral beings have a purpose, and a Creation with moral beings must contain a moral purpose.

Nice summary I'd say. The whole reflection is here.

Women and Girls


As I said in London, it is not about Qur'anic texts; it's about the cultural outworking of the Islamic worldview.



Thanks to Robert Spencer.

Monday, August 17, 2009

Making it simple . . .

Thanks to Athos at The Three Massketeers, here are three short sentences from Archbishop Charles Chaput that encapsulate my own take on the current hot topic:
The whole meaning of “health care” would be subverted by any plan that involves mandated abortion access or abortion funding. The reason is obvious. Killing or funding the killing of unborn children has nothing to do with promoting human health, and including these things in any “health care” proposal, no matter how shrewdly hidden, would simply be a form of lying.

Monday, August 10, 2009

Bob Dylan

“I think that this world is just a passing through place and that the dead have eyes and that even the unborn can see and I don’t care who knows it.” -- Bob Dylan