“Governing elites . . . have cruelly abandoned broad swathes of vulnerable Americans—including children, the working class, black Americans, and the urban poor—in implementing scientifically uninformed, politically partisan, and self-serving policies.” Proving the Point at Saint Vincent College (City Journal)
Technology, feminism, and the human person – “Favale interweaves reason with narrative, literary references, and autobiography to offer an argument that is grounded emotionally as well as intellectually.” Gender After Eden (First Things)
Trust problems – “Trust in traditional media has declined to an all-time low, and many news professionals are determined to do something about it.” Media trust hits new low (Axios)
A Fraternal Open Letter – “It is the duty of all bishops to promote and to safeguard the unity of faith and the discipline common to the whole Church.” Why I Signed the Open Letter to Germany’s Bishops (First Things, Bishop Salvatore J. Cordileone)
Consequences of Lockdown – “When, the summer before last, the results of the first Covid wave began to be tallied in the media, there were different ways of measuring the devastation.” Here’s Why No One Wants to Talk About Sweden (The Epoch Times)
Truth and Rhetoric – “Today, as in the days of Plato, rhetoric is what moves the crowd. But as Plato knew, truth, not rhetoric, is the task of philosophy and philosophers.” Rowan Williams and Our Sentimental Age (First Things)
A Bad Benefit – “Yelp will cover the travel expenses of employees” who want to “travel out of state for abortions, joining the ranks of major employers” trying to defy “restrictions on abortion in Texas and other states.” Yelp to cover travel expenses for workers seeking abortions (ABC News)
Fasting from “Whiteness” – For the duration of the Lenten season, the historic First United Church of Oak Park in the Chicago suburb of Oak Park, Illinois, excluded “any music or liturgy written or composed by white people” from worship services. Historic Church’s Woke New Spin on Lent Includes ‘Fasting from Whiteness’ and Race-Based Liturgy Overhaul (Western Journal)
The social media war – Elon Musk, owner of Tesla and one of the world’s richest men, delivered a letter to Twitter with a proposal to acquire all outstanding shares of the company for $54.20 each. Elon Musk offers to buy Twitter, says company ‘needs to be transformed’ (NBC News)
The Common Good – “In the Catholic tradition, the classic definition of the common good is a set of conditions that allows each and every member of a community to flourish.” The Common Good (The Imaginative Conservative)
Does progress have to mean the sexual liberation of children? – “So while the term ‘groomer’ is unfair in the sense that the intent behind most of this infant erotic proselytising really isn’t initiating sexual contact with those kids, it’s also entirely justified.” The rise of the liberal groomer (UnHerd.com)
Prayer and the Present – “The reality of human existence is that all we ever have available to us is what is experienced in this very minute, right here, right now.” Released and Healed through Prayer (Integrated Catholic Life)
Unpleasant Holiness – “Sometimes it might seem to Christians that holiness is being nice, but it’s not. The more you do God’s will in the world, the more you will have enemies and suffer persecution.” Assertiveness Training for Catholics (Catholic Stand)
(*The posting of any particular news item or essay is not an endorsement of the content and perspective of said news item or essay.)
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I hope you will consider doing this short list of links to pertinent news stories. Maybe at least once a week!
“Far from the common good requiring persons to enter into the kind of voluntary slavery talked about by Rousseau” (Deavel on The Common Good in the Imaginative Conservative).
It was held Robespierre slept with Rousseau’s the Emile under his pillow, a lawyer advocate for the poor in France and rumored friend of Louis XIV. Until the revolution. When in power his personalistic egalitarian ideals, the individual freedoms of the the Republic, when threatened, compelled the champion of Liberté, égalité, fraternité to turn to a concept of the Common Good disavowed by Rousseau, but now enforced [the guillotine] by deadly observance, and with greater enslavement. The model adopted by Marxists particularly Stalin when disruption triggered his paranoia. +++David Deavel highly aware of the difference between a Natural Law principle, the Common Good and the bastardized concept imposed by despots. He quotes, “First, the common good presupposes respect for the person as such. In the name of the common good, public authorities are bound to respect the fundamental and inalienable rights of the human person” (from the Catholic Catechism).
America today initially the freest of national societies has turned toward a similar desultory concept of the Common Good that censures, threatens legally, vilifies any and all who actually stand for freedom of speech and freedom of religion, who are opposed to the enforcement of perverted sexual values imposed on all including our children. Without God, [even by those who call themselves Catholic in congress who are really idolaters of a falsified image of god] the best of our principles that define humanness become corrupt.
In FT’s review of “Gender After Eden,” reviewer Mary Harrington characterizes Favale’s style of argument as an ’emerging genre’ of “postmodern combat theology.” I cannot help but wonder the words she’d use to describe CWR’s hosted comments following Favale’s review of Gordon.