Around 80% of Brazilians are Roman Catholics and 59% of them disagree with the Church’s position on abortion. The government of Lula da Silva has announced that morning-after pills will be distributed to poor women. Read more
Around 80% of Brazilians are Roman Catholics and 59% of them disagree with the Church’s position on abortion. The government of Lula da Silva has announced that morning-after pills will be distributed to poor women. Read more
Michael Collins is an icon in Irish history. A leader in the Irish war of independence (1919-21), he outwitted the British empire and negotiated a peace treaty that granted a degree of independence that would have been unthinkable even a few years before. As director of intelligence of the IRA, he honed the tactics of fast-moving guerilla warfare, and also established a sophisticated network of spies that proved more effective than their British counterparts. More controversially, he initiated a series... Read more
Part Four – At Home in the Web of Life (1995) Observing At Home in the Web of Life, the second pastoral letter of the Catholic bishops of Appalachia, was conceived as a continuation of the reflection started in This Land is Home to Me. Twenty years after the promulgation of the first pastoral, the second pastoral starts the hermeneutical circle again by observing the changes that have taken place in Appalachia in twenty years. Part one praises the positive... Read more
From John Allen’s daily column at NCR: Some Brazilian bishops are charging that behind-closed-doors revisions to the final document from last May’s General Conference of the Bishops of Latin America and the Caribbean (CELAM) have softened its support for base communities, a pastoral approach associated with liberation theology, according to reports in the Brazilian media. The Brazilian newspaper Estado broke the story last week, reporting variations between the text approved by the Latin American bishops at the close of their... Read more
Happy Memorial of St. Augustine of Hippo! “Lord, renew in your Church the spirit you gave Saint Augustine. Filled with this spirit, may we thirst for you alone as the fountain of wisdom and seek you as the source of eternal life.” (Morning Prayer, Memorial of Augustine, Bishop and Doctor) To commemorate who is arguably the single most significant Bishop, Father and Doctor of Catholic tradition, I decided to write a few tips on how to read Augustine. Please excuse... Read more
Recently, I created a poll asking the readers of Vox Nova to determine who they thought should be labeled the “most influential unknown.” One of the people I put on the list was Nikolai Fedorov (1828 – 1903). I was mildly surprised but also impressed with the fact that one person voted for him. Very few have heard of him, clearly making him an unknown. Yet, the impact of his thought can be felt through the 20th century, not only... Read more
Following up on this post of mine, from a few days ago . . . . Over at Balkinization, Andy Koppelman has weighed in — with this post, “The Partly Necessary God” — to the Perry / Tamanaha / Vischer / Balkin / Araujo / etc. discussion on God and the morality of human rights. (It strikes me that Andy’s post works well in conversation with Michael Scaperlanda’s, at Mirror of Justice, here.) For starters, Prof. Koppelman takes it as... Read more
Last Thursday, Bishop William Skylstad of Spokane, the President of the USCCB, issued the following statement deploring the move by Amnesty International to promote abortion rights around the world: A Statement of the President of the United States Conference of Catholic BishopsBishop William S. Skylstad, Bishop of Spokane August 23, 2007 After nearly a year of dialogue with leaders of Amnesty International (AI), the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops strongly protests the recent action of AI’s International Council to... Read more
In one of the comments on some thread last week, somebody mentioned the importance of a written constitution, especially as a guarantor of basic human rights. I’m not so sure. My first reaction was to think of Thomas Hobbes, for I believe that the prevailing post-Enlightenment constitutionalism as legal doctrine emanates directly from the thought of Hobbes. It was Hobbes who, more than anybody else, led to the idea of social contracts overtaking the common good as the object of... Read more
Our parish is currently going through stewardship renewal, and this past weekend my wife and I had the honor of preaching the homily at all five Masses. It was exhausting, but rewarding. We had several people tell us that our remarks impacted them deeply, and that is always nice to hear. Anyway, there are two (somewhat random) stories from this experience that I thought Vox Nova’s readers would get a kick out of hearing. 1. After the last homily we... Read more
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