False ultimatums.

Last updated on: March 11, 2008 at 12:08 pm By Matthew

(Hat-tip to Andrew Sullivan) I’ve blogged before on MacIntyre’s thesis that we should resist the argument that one MUST vote, even if all choices are reprehensible. Rather than rethink the questions, or propose a new paradigm for conceiving and dealing with our cultural problems, the antagonists usually propose the dilemma something like this: To those thinking about “sitting it out,” or “supporting a third party” now, consider an analogy. We are facing a burning building. There is a day-care center... Read more

The Devil Came on Horseback

Last updated on: March 11, 2008 at 11:38 am By Radical Catholic Mom

Note: Alexham or Feddie, wrote about this movie back in July 2007. I watched it last night, finally. The 2007 Sundance Award winning movie is about former Marine Capt Brian Steidle’s work with the African Union’s cease fire monitoring in 2004 of the crisis in Sudan. His job was to go to Sudan with a camera, pen and paper and document any violations of the cease fire. He didn’t have a clue where Sudan was when he went and he... Read more

Sign the Sojourners Statement!

Last updated on: March 11, 2008 at 11:15 am By Morning's Minion

To mark the fifth anniversary of the unjust Iraq war and occupation, Jim Wallis’s Sojourners have issued a statement calling “the American church to lament and repent of the sin of this war” (let’s set aside the issue of what constitutes the “American church”). Just remember this war, a war born in the tempest of anger and a for revenge, a war fueled by lies and obfuscation, a war defended by a perverse caricature of the just war principles. And five years on,... Read more

Mormon mayhem

Last updated on: March 11, 2008 at 10:32 am By Policraticus

I’m sure many have already heard the news, and I want to get a sense of how other Catholics feel about the recent vandalism of the Shrine of the Mexican Martyrs and the mocking of the Catholic faith apparently done by three Mormon missionaries in San Luis, Colorado. The AP article from the Denver Post describes photos that were seen online of the missionaries in action: The Internet photos showed the three vandalizing the Shrine of the Mexican Martyrs in... Read more

If Reanimating the Dead is Wrong, I Don't Wanna Be Right

Last updated on: March 11, 2008 at 9:00 am By Edward Blackadder

The theme of bringing people back from the dead has been a theme of science fiction and horror at least since the time of Mary Shelley, generally with the underlying moral lesson being that it’s bad bad bad. But as Eve Tushnet notes, the moral argument underlying such a message is often lacking: most “came back wrong” stories rely on an over-easy assertion that it’s wrong to cheat death without any sense of why that might be true. My most... Read more

Not News Of The World

Last updated on: March 10, 2008 at 3:40 pm By M.Z.

51 Comments

This is not news. While I may take some joy in someone’s public humiliation, this is not news. While parts of me what to calculate how many meetings would be required before my mortgage was paid off, this is not news. Ranking right up there with misery lit, crime news is merely circuses for the people. Rather than raising the public awareness and public discourse, this is meant to appeal to the base emotions. In particular, this appeals to pride and... Read more

Vetoes of Evil

Last updated on: March 10, 2008 at 10:25 am By Morning's Minion

April 10, 1996: Bill Clinton vetoes the partial-birth abortion ban. March 8, 2008: George Bush vetoes a ban on waterboarding torture. This should be the final nail in the coffin of the idea, peddled largely by his Catholic supporters, that Bush is more pro-life, or more in line with Catholic teaching, than his predecessor or his political opponents. For this veto amounts to an embrace of a hideous act, an intrinsically evil act, on the basest of consequentualist reasoning. And remember: Clinton’s veto, disgusting... Read more