I’m going to attempt to be brief tonight, and so I request some indulgence in that I won’t be attempting to address objections in the post but I may do so in the comments. One of the more disturbing trends I see is a reduction to fatalism of many of the world’s problems. While in most cases the rational actor is not completely denied, the rational actor is certainly diminished. Fatalism has a certain attraction in that we don’t have... Read more
At Coalition for Fog, a few commentators have actually defended the U.S. use of atomic weapons on Hiroshima and Nagasaki during World War II. Despite the fact that the use of these weapons is perhaps the greatest sin committed by the United States and that Catholic support or defense of their use is a self-refuting idea, we still find Catholics claiming that these weapons of mass destruction saved lives purchased at the cost of a lesser evil. This is perhaps... Read more
There have been many reactions to the recent CDF document, Responses to Some Questions Regarding Certain Aspects of the Doctrine of the Church, most of which were as one expected. A few which have not been sufficiently discussed, like the response of Pope Shendouda III , are somewhat surprising and should be examined without any media bias reading into what was said. However, the presentation of the document by the media, and the selection of respondents the media presented us... Read more
Somewhat surprisingly, my recent post defending gun control proved to be one of the most controversial. I must therefore be a masochist, as I have a burning desire to revisit this topic!! Then again, I remain convinced that I am right 🙂 Last time, I showed that gun-related deaths (both suicide and homicide) were staggeringly high in the United States. This time, I would like to get a little more rigorous, by looking at cross-country patterns of gun deaths and... Read more
I have been in the Dominican Republic this week for the first time ever and the Dominicans have just given me a great lesson: one of patience and simplicity. Merengue, a fun Latin music to dance to, runs in the veins of the Dominicans. They have produced most of the best musicians out there in this genre: Wilfrido Vargas, Juan Luis Guerra, Los Ilegales, and more… You hear merengue everywhere: in the streets, cars, restaurants, you name it. When they... Read more
In what appears to be an attempt at wit, Diogenes writes in his blurb entitled “Adam Smith, call home“: To elimate [sic] poverty, the learned archbishop says, we need.. ..an integration between the mechanisms that produce wealth and the mechanisms for the distribution of its benefits… We have one. It’s called the marketplace. And you’d like to replace it with….? Good call, Diogenes! Obviously Adam Smith is our guide to diagnosing and eliminating global poverty! That’s right, Adam Smith who,... Read more
Shades of Pope Leo XIII in our Pontiff! From CathNews: Meanwhile, Fr Lombardi has confirmed that the Pope is dedicating part of his holiday to writing the second part of his book Jesus of Nazareth, and to reflecting upon his next encyclical “which will have a social theme.” Click here for the initial forecast. Read more
Shades of Pope Leo XIII in our Pontiff! From CathNews: Meanwhile, Fr Lombardi has confirmed that the Pope is dedicating part of his holiday to writing the second part of his book Jesus of Nazareth, and to reflecting upon his next encyclical “which will have a social theme.” Click here for the initial forecast. Read more
Catholic World News is a popular and generally useful information source on Catholic matters. On its About CWN page, CWNews describes its mission as: Catholic World News is an independent Catholic news service staffed by lay Catholic journalists, dedicated to providing accurate world news, written from a distinctively Catholic perspective. There is no question that the reports from CWNews are written from a “distinctively Catholic perspective.” However, the claim that the service is “dedicated to providing accurate world news” can... Read more
Katerina recently posted a good piece on Patriotism and Importance of Memory. As one of the Vox Nova contributors who has written on the subject of patriotism/nationalism regularly, I didn’t want her post to go by without highlighting it. The type of patriotism she describes — rooted in authentic community, solidarity, and memory — is one that I can indeed recognize in myself, only not so much as a citizen of the United States, but as having most of my... Read more
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