6 Comments

CJ Wolfe
November 12th, 2012 | 11:33 am

Good article, I agree with pretty much all of it Peter. There was one reference I didn’t understand though, when you say:
“Most Americans and most scientists don’t buy Robert George’s take on the science of embryology.”
Are you saying George’s scienctific facts are wrong, in say a book like “Embryo: A Defense of Human Life” which he co-wrote with Chris Tollefson? Or are you saying that the moral judgments made about embryos which George makes GIVEN those scientific facts don’t quite rise to the level of “moral facts”? Up to this point I haven’t heard much of anyone contest the scientific facts that New Natural Law guys bring to bear on the abortion issue, but how those facts are characterized.

CJ Wolfe
November 12th, 2012 | 11:49 am

Tocqueville also said that American Catholics used to listen and submit to the Priests’ opinions as if they were kings. If the Bishops had come out as strongly against a candidate back in Tocqueville’s time as they did this year, that candidate would have gotten the Catholic vote for sure.

I wonder who has changed more, the clergy or the people in the pews? And could better articulated reasons concernnig the political interest of the church by Catholic political theorists really take the place of or reconnect to that view of AUTHORITY

Robert Cheeks
November 12th, 2012 | 6:54 pm

The essay seems a critique of modernity grounded on the collapse of church authority and the on going failure of secularists to capture and promote that ethical behavior that could ensure a continuing and prospering civilization, with the possibility of seeking the ‘good.’

When homosexuality and abortion are defined as normative social criteria, and key electoral elements, and not examples of a pathological perversity that continues to corrupt and debauch, we know we’re in really, really BIG trouble.

Pete Spiliakos
November 12th, 2012 | 8:07 pm

Very good stuff. I’d say it is better than anything coming out of talk radio or the Republican congessional leadership, but that would be damning with faint praise.

The idea of the Republicans adopting a more incrementalist abortion platform and attacking the Democrats for their abortion extremism has a lot of political sense to it. The problem was that Romney lacked the credibility to make than change without risking an intraparty civil war. What was worse was he got a platform he would not defend.

A Reader
November 14th, 2012 | 9:45 am

How do I access the article? I cannot seem to find the link.

Northern Observer
November 14th, 2012 | 3:31 pm

Why not lead by example instead of rhetoric and law?