Problematic Liberties and Competing Liberalisms – “At the founding of our nation, the definition of individual liberty seemed Christian, when in fact it wasn’t—at least not entirely.” A Clash of Liberalisms (What We Need Now)
Normalcy Bias Against Jews – “If you had ever wondered how you would have behaved as the Nazis began persecuting Jews after they came to power in 1934, now is your chance to find out.” British Jews: The Canary in Europe’s Coal Mine (European Conservative)
Trojan Horse Migration – “New Yorkers recently encountered what Londoners and residents of other cities in the British Isles have been enduring. On Sept. 25, a large group of Muslims combined religious fervor with political protest by praying in front of Trump Tower.” Rome Caters to Mecca: When appeasement becomes continental suicide. (FrontPage Magazine)
Betraying the Pro-Life Community – “Trump administration officials say their hands were tied over the Food and Drug Administration’s decision to greenlight a generic version of the abortion drug mifepristone.” Trump’s abortion pill approval shatters his and Vance’s pro-life facade (Washington Examiner)
Capital Punishment Discussion – “In any fruitful discussion of this topic, it must constantly be kept in mind that there are two questions that need to be clearly distinguished. First, is the death penalty intrinsically wrong?” Fastiggi and Sonna on Catholicism and capital punishment (Edward Feser – Blogspot)
Interdisciplinary Catholic Conference – “Catholic academics are set to come together Oct. 24-25 in Steubenville, Ohio, to better understand the role the faith plays in their intellectual vocations at the 33rd annual National Conference of the Society of Catholic Social Scientists.” National conference for Catholic social scientists to cultivate relationship of faith, reason (Franciscan)
Historic Agreement – “President Donald Trump traveled to Egypt Oct. 13 and officially signed the U.S.-backed peace agreement to end the war in Gaza, calling the event “the dawn of a new era” for the Middle East.” ‘Peace in the Middle East’: Trump celebrates Gaza peace deal (CatholicVote)
Surprisingly Old American Tradition – “While numerous Roman Catholics have served in very high positions in the government, most famously Presidents John F. Kennedy and Joseph Biden, it has been relatively rare for adult converts to the Catholic Church to be among them.” Catholic conversions in presidential families (The Pillar)
The Chosen‘s Invented Storylines – “While the series on the life of Jesus has plenty of inspiring content, some of the details are theologically problematic.” ‘The Chosen’ may be inspiring—but its theology isn’t inspired (U.S. Catholic)
(*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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@ Trojan Horse Migration
“Rome Caters to Mecca. When appeasement becomes continental suicide. Muslims, raping and sexually abusing women and girls. More than 100,000 demonstrators on Sept. 13 protested the British government’s inaction and apparent goal to make such migrants a protected class immune from law”.
Author Hippolito’s title and opening lines speak so pointedly to what continues to appear a suicidal death wish of the West Europe and to lesser extent the US. How can a cultured people, a people with a storied history of conquest and valor be reduced to cowardly complacency when the very core of the human heart’s sense of justice is violated. Women and young girls violated, wantonly raped. Verbally and physically abused in front of Cologne’s major cathedral, Hohe Domkirche zu Köln on a religious holy day?
First it’s the intellectual heresy of modernism in a capitulation to the now more structured, observant Islam, “The Church is aware that it can offer a sort of new civil religion to the United States of Europe, wrote Enzo Pace, sociology professor at the University of Padua. To ensure this integration, the Catholic Church believes it is necessary to accept the idea of recognizing Islam as a universal religion, while inviting Islam to accept at least the basic moral and juridical principles of European Christian culture”.
Why the betrayal of Christ in the face of Islam? If we reject Christ we inwardly align ourselves with Judas Iscariot. We’ve surrendered our will to fight when there is no rationale to fight. A self imposed cowardice.
I’ll be confessional on this dynamic, when as a youth and my return to Brooklyn when discharged from the military I was spiritually broken following persecution over an altercation with the military police. Returning to Brooklyn I eventually lost the will to fight against antagonists in a very adversarial society. Christ came to my aid and recovery followed. A change in the dynamics was necessary. Unfortunately, Europeans seem to have lost the will to rectify injustice simply because there’s nothing sacred, beautiful, pure and holy to inspire resistance and redemption. So they are in a real sense suicidal. Not the tragic hanging of oneself, rather the slow death of multiple self betrayals.
Personally, I’m deeply concerned with the present hierarchal spirit of compromise with what has traditionally been judged intrinsically opposed to truth and goodness, both in the arena of sexual mores, and as regards the absolute primacy of the revelation of God and his commandments through the person of Christ.
From Enzo Pace, sociology professor at the University of Padua, we read: “To ensure this integration, the Catholic Church believes it is necessary to accept the idea of recognizing Islam as a universal religion, while inviting Islam to accept at least the basic moral and juridical principles of European Christian culture”.
Self-referential sociology?
Not “integration” but maybe co-existence; and therefore two points and three questions:
FIRST, it’s perhaps illuminating to understand Islam less as a parallel “religion” than as a complex product of cultural anthropology. Which, in its early bid to be universal, folded a lot of the Torah and Christian writings into the polyglot Qur’an—which then is believed to be both “dictated” (untouchable except through blasphemy) and “un-created” (with the Qur’an as the “word made book” REPLACING the incarnate Jesus Christ, “the Word made flesh”).
SECOND, the laudable self-understanding of Islam—the “germ of Islam”— is “fitrah,” the original orientation of humanity very simply “to be,” as oriented toward God. But as for “basic moral and juridical principles,” although the Qur’an reveres the “Law of Moses,” there is no explicit mention of the prohibitive Commandments (something like the omissions of some Western “process theology”?). And, no acceptance of personal free will together with the evil entanglement of sin original to ourselves (rather than due to an inscrutable, deterministic and even self-contradictory Allah; with the polar-opposite principle of “abrogation” embedded in the Qur’an).
This QUESTION for the post-Enlightenment sociologist elites: exactly what is the foundation for “basic moral and judicial principles” once Christ is removed from what is in fact a post-Christian European culture? And, philosophically, what is the place for the non-demonstrable first principle of non-contradiction?
A QUESTION for the Church: rather than deferring to what devolved into fluidly inclusive synodality, instead, how to fill the gap left by a European Charter that still remembers its Classical heritage but walks away from the coherence of faith and reason—as enabled only by a Self-disclosing and Triune God? Yes, Islam is an expansive religion, but “universal”? And with an entirely different understanding of, say, “fraternity” than is found in either the Church (the Eucharistic/”Mystical Body of Christ”) or secular society (with a distinct by not totally separate Constitutional form and which is directly responsible for the “common good”).
QUESTION: Over the long run, is there really a via media with the ummah—the transnational brotherhood of the “followers of Islam”? That is, how would a 21st-century Successor of the Apostles, or a post-Christian diplomat, phrase the invitation to individual Muslims and their Islamic “executors” of the Divine Will, to step out of the pre-Christian (not chronologically) and seemingly ahistorical 7th Century?
Back to back brilliant observations from our two superstars on this forum.
Re: Trojan Horse Migration
This article underscores a frightening problem, the fact that the Church’s leaders have clearly embraced Islam as a co-equal faith to Christianity.
Within just the past week or so, Pope Leo permitted the installation of an Islamic prayer room in the Vatican, complete with individual prayer rugs.
Leo — as Bergoglio before him — appears to be completely unaware of the slow-motion invasion of Europe by Muslim males.
It would be nice to see him express as much concern about the young European girls being raped by gangs of illegal immigrants as he does about the illegal immigrants.
brineyman: If a man doesn’t have daughters of his own he’s less likely to be repulsed by the rape of young women by islamists.
“Leo — as Bergoglio before him — appears to be completely unaware of the slow-motion invasion of Europe by Muslim males. ”
Remember almost 20 years ago, the then Argentine Cardinal insolently skewered Benedict over Regensberg? If only Benedict would have buried Bergoglio in some archive never to be heard from again.
Leo is Francis 2.0. At this juncture, a little more disciplined and less of a bull in a china shop but substantively the same.
If things continue as they are; Mass Attendance will continue to wane, children-to the extent that they are born-will go unbaptized and unevangelized, the young will engage in sexual deviancies and cohabitate, churches will close, the church will lurch to irrelevance and social work/political activism.
In the gym I go to, there’s a young man who will soon be wed. This ends a period of cohabitation and because his intended is another tradition and he identifies as Catholic (doesn’t go to Mass) they will be married by a civil officer to avoid any “intermural squabbling”. Pray for him. He’s a decent guy who works hard. He’s also suffered through a bit of problem with one of his parents who lived a scandalous life. I see in him an element of poverty, only not material poverty, spiritual poverty, the kind that apparently doesn’t bother most Bishop.
BXVI used the standard of “reciprocity” with Islam. Think there’ll be a chapel in Mecca anytime soon? Unfortunately, Benedict didn’t bury the insubordinate Bergoglio and the smoke he discussed is suffocating.
Will nobody rid us of these turbulent prelates?
Edward Feser lists 2 statements about the death penalty, and says the first is true, and then lists the second:
“(2) The Church always taught for 2,000 years that the death penalty is not only not intrinsically wrong, but that it is generally a good idea….”
Feser then says this is false.
But the Catechism of the Council of Trent, (1560’s and our official catechism for over 400 years) in the section on the 5th commandment says: “Another kind of lawful slaying belongs to the civil authorities, to whom is entrusted power of life
and death, by the legal and judicious exercise of which they punish the guilty and protect the
innocent. The just use of this power, far from involving the crime of murder, is an act of
paramount obedience to this Commandment which prohibits murder.”
How is it not a good thing if it is an act of paramount obedience to the commandment?
A regrettable necessity?
With regard to The Chosen, I initially had problems with it because of the negatives listed in the article. But, then I read a description of it as “A Religious Soap Opera” and with that understanding I can watch it with family members who like it.
Re: Betraying the Pro-Life Community
“Trump’s abortion pill approval shatters his and Vance’s pro-life facade.”
I agree that Trump’s allowing the abortion pill to be legalized is deeply disappointing. Horrifying, especially since Trump was himself saved from being aborted by assassination through divine intervention.
But I would feel better about pointing fingers in his direction if Pope Leo hadn’t aligned himself with Senator Dick Durbin, a member of the Democratic Death Cult who for decades has advocated for the slaughter of innocents all around the world.
Who has betrayed the babies more than Leo and Cupich and the countless other Catholic prelates who have tacitly accepted the fact that the murder of children is the number one cause of death worldwide.
Capital Punishment Discussion – “In any fruitful discussion of this topic, it must constantly be kept in mind that there are two questions that need to be clearly distinguished. First, is the death penalty intrinsically wrong?”
*******
No, but it’s mostly not necessary in the developed world. Plus why give the state that kind of power over life & death if you don’t even trust them to educate your children or run a fair election?
“No, but it’s mostly not necessary in the developed world”:
Fascinating. Care to define “necessary” and the standards by which you measure it?
“Within just the past week or so, Pope Leo permitted the installation of an Islamic prayer room in the Vatican, complete with individual prayer rugs.”
Talk about the need for an act of reparation.
What’s next? “Here, Satanists, need a place to sacrifice black cats?”
@ Normalcy Bias Against Jews
Rod Dreher paints the picture very well. The impending doom of European Christianity and with it the historical Europe. Surveying all the dynamics, the parallel with Nazi Germany for British Jews threatened by burgeoning Islamic power. Britons leaving. The threat of murderous Islam.
Tragically, perhaps not anomalously Dreher quotes, “On the World Day of Migration this past July 25th, Pope Leo XIV issued a pro-migrant statement, saying in part that ‘communities that welcome them can also be a living witness to hope’”. We’re left aghast that both Leo and his beloved predecessor Francis did not, cannot perceive this. They have an intellect, they can reason, how could not? A foreign spirit treacherous and beguiling.
I enjoyed reading Mr Dreher’s article also.
@ Problematic Liberties and Competing Liberalisms
Essayist Michel Therrien issues a major premise by analogy of a squared corner, the dimensions requiring perfection for extension to other corners. A slightest virtually imperceptible irregularity will inevitably be apparent in the extensions to other squared corners.
Analogies work wonders. Although are they necessarily correct, because the comparison of likeness in two different things does not erase their differences. Take freedom. Is it an envisioned concept? Or is it an absolute truth? Where and in which contexts do we measure, if possible, whether our understanding of freedom is liberty or license?
Therrien posits the question where it belongs, politics and governing. Our Constitution, Declaration of Independence address freedom but do not define it. Consequently freedom, if not clearly articulated toward a definition impinges upon the common good. This poses a question, must we accept a degree of rupture with the common good to exercise freedom? Or is freedom an atomistic right inherent to the individual permitting no restriction? For sake of harmony a degree of rupture is permissible.
If we argue that a man’s liberty is what the word says it is to be liberty, how far does that allow a man in context of the community, the common good, take us? Recently, Journalist Bret Baier interviewed former Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy on his legacy. A golden opportunity lost. Bret did not ask Kennedy to articulate, discuss his views on the likely effect of that definition he gave in his Opinion in favor of abortion in Casey.
Perhaps it really doesn’t matter because most of us know the answer. A concept of Liberty that provides for the human freedom to kill human life in the womb [and postpartum] at will. Liberty must have moral parameters for the protection of human life, for the common good of a culture. Because the unlimited freedom to kill human life affects the entire human community.
Catholics have revelation and God’s law. Others don’t. They do have the natural law. Although that inherent rule of justice is ignored, even by Catholics. A Roman pontiff is in a most excellent position to make that rule of justice clearly and convincingly known to the world community. As are the moral principles of sexual behavior that impact the family; family an endangered species.