(HT: Ignatius Scoop)
When I came across this general invitation by Amazing Grace Baptist Church (Canton, NC) to participate in its October 31 book-burning, bar-b-que and worship service I was disappointed that none of my own published works were deemed worthy of incineration. I would have thought that Return to Rome was a no-brainer. But what do I know? Perhaps I am included under “etc.” One can only hope. Here is the announcement as it appears on the church’s website:
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According to Lisa Schiffrin at NRO:
Some people have noted that Barack Obama has not actually achieved peace, anywhere, or diminution of hostilities, or the destruction of even one nuclear weapon, (or even any of his domestic agenda). But, as the Nobel Committee announced, this award is about a new climate of hope.
Ironically, the fact that the unborn has not achieved certain powers and abilities it may only actualize in the future, and does not actualize in the present, is employed by some bioethicists to justify abortion. (See my critique of such arguments here and here). So, Obama’s potential gets him the Nobel Peace Prize, while the unborn’s potential, unfortunately, is not enough to avoid being awarded the prize of prenatal violence.
(Originally posted on Southern Appeal)
The following is from an interview of Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius. It appeared in U. S. News & World Report. (HT: Ignatius Scoop)
You are also a pro-choice Catholic, and I was reading some stories out of your home state recently where one of the bishops took an action. Can you tell us a little bit about that?
Well, the Archbishop in the Kansas City area did not approve of my conduct as a public official and asked that I not present myself for communion.
What did you think about that?
Well, it was one of the most painful things I have ever experienced in my life, and I am a firm believer in the separation of church and state, and I feel that my actions as a parishioner are different than my actions as a public official and that the people who elected me in Kansas had a right to expect me to uphold their rights and their beliefs even if they did not have the same religious beliefs that I had. And that’s what I did: I took an oath of office and I have taken an oath of office in this job and will uphold the law.
Secretary Sebelius, let me introduce you to St. Thomas More, a Catholic public official:
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He exclaims: “I see lies being told, I see fears being raised, and I see violence even being threatened at these mob sessions.” He is, of course, talking about the many ordinary American citizens who had the temerity to “speak truth to power” at recent Townhall Meetings hosted by assorted members of Congress over the past couple of weeks.
Also, why the passive voice? The Rev. Wallis saw “lies being told,” but did he see people telling lies? He saw “fears being raised,” but did he see people raising fears? He saw “violence being threatened,” but he did see people threatening violence? At some point, the Rev. Wallis should assert what he thinks and believes rather using language that allows him to accuse without making accusations.
Or perhaps he didn’t see anything. Perhaps he was just being appeared to.
(Originally posted on What’s Wrong with the World)
This, just up, from Sarah Palin on her Facebook page (with footnotes too!):
Yesterday President Obama responded to my statement that Democratic health care proposals would lead to rationed care; that the sick, the elderly, and the disabled would suffer the most under such rationing; and that under such a system these “unproductive” members of society could face the prospect of government bureaucrats determining whether they deserve health care.
The President made light of these concerns. He said:
From David French at NRO’s Phi Beta Cons:
Today’s Inside Higher Ed details the rather disturbing story of an EEOC finding that Belmont Abbey College, a Catholic college in North Carolina, engaged in “gender discrimination” when it refused — consistent with its Catholic faith — to cover oral contraceptives in its employer-provided health-care plan.
To describe this as a fundamental religious-liberty issue would be something of an understatement. Private religious organizations have traditionally enjoyed the right to organize around a religious purpose and advance their religious message through hiring, personnel policies, and public expression. In fact, personnel policies are a fundamental part of any institution’s religious expression.
Perhaps most disturbing was the EEOC’s utter failure to offer any substantive analysis of the college’s First Amendment rights. After all, this is not an “in name only” Christian institution. Even a brief glance at the college’s website shows that it is committed to its Catholic values. Yet the federal government just plows through that identity. And to what end? For what higher purpose? Does the so-called sexual autonomy of a few disgruntled employees actually trump core constitutional values? Some would say yes
According to the Inside Higher Education story on the case, “In its letter, the commission [i.e., the EEOC] noted that failure to cover oral contraceptives constituted gender-based discrimination because it denied a benefit to women only.”
Because Catholic moral theology maintains that the use of oral contraceptives for the prevention of pregnancy is immoral, oral contraception is not a “benefit” according to Belmont Abbey College. Thus, the EEOC, a government agency, has issued a verdict on the veracity of the moral theology embraced by Belmont Abbey College: it is mistaken.
Separation of Church and State ain’t what it used to be.
In an op-ed piece published on August 10 in USA Today, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Majority Leader Steny Hoyer write that “drowning out opposing views is simply un-American.” In a speech delivered in Virginia on August 7, President Barack Obama said this: “I don’t want the folks who created the mess to do a lot of talking. I want them to get out of the way so we can clean up the mess. I don’t mind cleaning up after them, but don’t do a lot of talking.”
So, if it is un-American to drown out opposing views, as Speaker Pelosi and Majority Leader Hoyer correctly maintain, then does it not follow that it is un-American for the nation’s chief executive to falsely brand those who hold opposing views as “the folks who created this mess” while demanding that they remain largely silent? Is not the President trying to “drown out” opposing views, albeit passive aggressively?
This summer has been one of profitable reading for me. Among the many books I have read are two that are particularly outstanding. Their virtue lies in the skillful, informed, and clear way they dismantle the case for unbelief made by a small cluster of writers that has come to be known as “The New Atheists.” (To paraphrase Peter Townsend, “Meet the new atheism, same as the old atheism,” except that the old atheism was far more sophisticated and understanding of the gravity of what it was rejecting. When you move from Bertrand Russell to Richard Dawkins, you’re not trading up).
I highly recommend God Is No Delusion: A Refutation of Richard Dawkins by Thomas Crean, O. P. (Ignatius Press, 2007) and Atheist Delusions: The Christian Revolution and Its Fashionable Enemies by David Bentley Hart (Yale University Press, 2009). Fr. Crean does yeoman’s work by offering a largely philosophical and theological response to the new atheists, and yet it is fully accessible to non-specialists. Professor Hart takes up the task of dismantling the sophomoric historical narrative of the new atheists. Neither author suffers fools, which makes for some entertaining reading as well. Both authors have been interviewed about their books. You can listen to John J. Miller’s NRO interview of Professor Hart here. Ignatius Press has published an interview with Fr. Crean, which you can find here. Enjoy.
(HT: Davy Buck on Southern Appeal)
You can find it in either PDF or html form. It is a summary (including very brief commentaries) of parts of HR 3200. It was, according to the document, “reviewed, revised and adapted on July 29, 2009, by Liberty Counsel from the original authored by Peter Fleckenstein and posted on FreeRepublic.com and his blog, http://blog.flecksoflife.com.” I reproduce it in its entirety below.
At the end of this month, Crossway Books is set to release The End of Secularism. It is authored by Hunter Baker, who is presently Director of Strategic Planning and Associate Provost at Houston Baptist University (HBU), where he teaches in the Department of Government. Hunter was my graduate assistant for two years (2003-2005) while he was earning his Ph.D. (in religion, politics, and society) at Baylor University. He also worked for then-Baylor President Robert B. Sloan, Jr., who now serves as President of HBU.
This is a terrific book, and comes out of Hunter’s doctoral dissertation. (Full disclosure: I served on Hunter’s dissertation committee). Here’s my endorsement as it appears on the publisher’s website:
“Hunter Baker is a gifted writer who knows how to communicate the issue of secularism to an audience that desperately needs to hear a critical though winsome voice on this matter. In many ways, the book is a twenty-first-century sequel to the late Richard John Neuhaus’s classic, The Naked Public Square. Baker understands the issues that percolate beneath the culture wars. They are not merely political but theological and philosophical, and they are rarely unpacked in an articulate way so that the ordinary citizen can gain clarity. Baker offers his readers that clarity.”
Others endorsing the book include David S. Dockery (President, Union University), Robert A. Sirico (President, Acton Institute), Russell D. Moore (Dean, Southern Baptist Theological Seminary), and Jennifer Roback Morse (Founder and President, The Ruth Institute).
I am so proud of Hunter and what he has accomplished. His years at Baylor were some of the most tumultuous in the school’s history. And because he was my grad assistant and worked closely with President Sloan, and had the temerity to come to our defense in several online publications, he was at the receiving end of several incredibly unfair, uncharitable, and unChristian attacks. Happily, those days seem like a distant memory. And Hunter has more than survived. He is now thriving at Houston Baptist University, under the leadership of one of the great visionaries in Christian higher education, Robert Sloan.
This issue has arisen in recent days. Supporters of H.R. 3200 claim that its end of life counseling provision, section 1233, is merely voluntary for the patient. But a closer look shows that section 1233 includes conditions and financial incentives for physicians and other health care providers that create a setting in which an elderly patient’s decision to appropriate this option is likely to be less than voluntary.
Writes Charles Lane in this morning’s Washington Post (HT: Jim Gergahty at NRO’s Campaign Spot):
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(HT: Creative Minority Report)
You can read about it here. For those who are interested, in 2006 I published a chapter in the book, Bob Dylan & Philosophy: It’s Alright, Ma (I’m Only Thinking), “Busy Being Born Again: Bob Dylan’s Christian Philosophy.” You can find that chapter here.
Robert P. George, a member of First Things‘ editorial board, published an op-ed piece in this morning’s Wall Street Journal. It concerns the issue of same-sex marriage and the courts. Here is an excerpt:
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Houston Baptist University publishes this wonderful new periodical called The CIty. (Full disclosure: I am one of its advisory editors).
In the Winter 2008 issue, Matthew Lee Anderson, published an insightful essay, “The New Evangelical Scandal.” My good friend, Professor John Mark Reynolds (of Biola University), and I were invited to write responses. They have just been published in the recently released Summer 2009 issue. My article, entitled “Evangelical Catholicity,” is accessible online here. (You can find Professor Reynold’s piece online here). The following is an excerpt from my article:
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The Rev. Russell E. Saltzman has authored a remarkable essay published on First Things’ On the Square (31 July 2009), “An Ecumenical Moment for One.”
A Lutheran pastor in Kansas City, the Rev. Saltzman laments his denomination’s (Evangelical Lutheran Church in America) readiness to bless same-sex unions and to allow those in same-sex unions to be ordained to the pastorate. He anticipates that this will occur at the ELCA’s forthcoming meeting in Minneapolis, 17-23 August 2009.
After entertaining several options for recalcitrant Lutheran congregations such as his own, he offers this possibility in his concluding three paragraphs:
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T
This evening I will be a guest on Fr. Ron Lengwin’s Sunday night radio program, Amplify. It is broadcast from KDKA in Pittsburgh (1020 on the AM dial). You can listen to the show from 9-11 pm EDT online here. I will be on the program to talk about my new book, Return to Rome: Confessions of An Evangelical Catholic (Brazos, 2009)
When not accusing physicians of performing unnecessary tonsillectomies for financial gain while offering no evidence to back up this claim, our President is accusing a Cambridge, Massachusetts police officer of acting “stupidly” while admitting he does not have access to, and thus has not fully apprised himself of, all the facts in the case. While opining on what “victory” would mean in Afghanistan, the President reached into his reservoir of historical acumen and offered this analysis: “I’m always worried about using the word ‘victory,’ because, you know, it invokes this notion of Emperor Hirohito coming down and signing a surrender to MacArthur.” However, in the real world, it was Mamoru Shigemitsu (Japan’s foreign affairs minister) who signed the surrender, and he did it before General Richard Sutherland, not General MacArthur.
The President, apparently, has immediate awareness of an ideal realm of “events” that we mere mortals cannot appropriate by our cognitive powers that seem forever bound by what our pedestrian minds think is “reality.”
Just received this calendar in the mail from a place called Bridegroom Press. 
It came with a cover letter by Steve Kellmeyer that included these comments: “As someone who has promoted indulgences in the past, we thought you might appreciate finding out more about this way of helping Catholics learn about and practice the work of indulgences.” He is probably referring to this little scuttlebutt at Baylor, about which I offered these comments.
Just for fun, I will name my office door “Wittenburg” and nail the calendar to it!
This letter, authored by Fr. Fessio, just appeared on the Ignatius Press website:
This morning, (Monday, July 20th) Dr. Jack Sites, Academic Vice President of Ave Maria University, flew from Houston, where he was attending a meeting of the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools, to San Francisco, to inform me personally that I was being dismissed from Ave Maria University. Our meeting was amicable and Dr. Sites, as always, acted as a Christian gentleman.
He said that the reason for my dismissal stemmed from a conversation I had in November of 2008 with Jack Donahue, then chairman of the board of AMU. At that time I felt it an obligation to speak to the board chairman before the upcoming board meeting, to make sure he was aware of the urgency of the university’s financial situation. After I had informed him, using projections based on publicly available documents and statements, he asked me what I thought was the solution. I told him that there were policies being followed that were at the root of the problem, that the present administration was irrevocably wedded to those policies, and that without a change of administration the university was at great risk.
Dr. Sites said that Jack Donahue related this conversation to Tom Monaghan, and it was decided (I don’t know specifically by whom) that the university could not have a faculty member making these criticisms of the administration and thus undermining the university.
Dr. Sites told me that there were unspecified others who had similar substantive concerns that I was undermining the university.
I continue to support the university. I pray for its success. I have great admiration for the faculty, students, and many of the staff. I do disagree with some of the policies of the administration. This seems to be the reason I was fired the first time, in March 2007, since the official explanation was “irreconcilable administrative differences”.
Nevertheless, I think it is an accurate summary to say that I am being dismissed as a faculty member because of a private conversation with the chairman of the board in which I made known my criticisms of the university administration; and because of allegations which have not been made known to me and to which I have not been given an opportunity to respond.
I will continue to recommend AMU to students and parents. And I will continue to think my dismissal is another mistake in a long series of unwise decisions.
Just found this wonderful blog online, here. The blog’s contents are divided into these categories:
Biographical Resources
Interviews
Collected Articles
Creation of Cardinal Dulles
Books by Avery Dulles
Video / Media Library
Meeting with Pope Benedict XVI
Articles about Avery Dulles
(Originally posted on Return to Rome blog)
Entitled “Capitalism with a Conscience,” it appeared on July 10 in the Times of London online.
Christianity Today just published my take on Pope Benedict XVI’s latest encyclical, Caritas in Veritate. Here is an excerpt.
Although mainstream media outlets have already spun this encyclical as one that focuses on the global economic crisis—and it most certainly does address that—that is clearly not the pope’s point of departure. For those who have eyes to see, the animating principle of this encyclical is virtually on every page of it: theological anthropology is the only proper starting pointing from which we can come to know the common good….
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That’s the title of an article I just published in Logos: A Journal of Catholic Thought and Culture 12.3 (Summer 2009): 53-67. You can find it online on my website here. Here are some excerpts (endnotes omitted):
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This is causing quite a stir online. Read Weigel’s essay here.
Criticisms are offered here, here, here, and here.
If you are interested in even more commentaries on the encyclical by others, Christopher Blosser is maintaining the master list here at First Things.
My own take on Caritas in Veritate will be published online sometime in the next 24 hour on Christianity Today’s website.
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