viernes, 28 de febrero de 2014

Europe : la famille diluée dans les droits de l’homme




par Gregor Puppinck

Dans un arrêt rendu le 7 novembre 2013, la CEDH a estimé que deux hommes adultes vivant séparément devaient bénéficier de la protection accordée aux familles dans le cas particulier où ils entretiennent une relation homosexuelle stable. Selon cette nouvelle conception du droit, ce n’est plus la famille qui précède l’État, mais la famille qui procède de l’État*.

La Cour européenne des droits de l'homme (la cour) affirme dans l'arrêt Vallianatos et autres c. Grèce(n° 29381/09 et 32684/09) que, dorénavant, lorsqu’un État européen légifère en matière de famille, il « doit choisir les mesures [...] en tenant compte de l’évolution de la société ainsi que des changements qui se font jour dans la manière de percevoir les questions de société, d’état civil et celles d’ordre relationnel, notamment de l’idée selon laquelle il y a plus d’une voie ou d’un choix possibles en ce qui concerne la façon de mener une vie privée et familiale » (§ 84).

La Cour veille ainsi à ce que les États européens adaptent leur législation à (sa propre perception de) l’évolution des mœurs. 

Cet arrêt marque une étape nouvelle dans la dissolution accélérée de la définition juridique de la famille qui, de réalité biologique et institutionnelle, est devenue une notionextensible jusqu’à l’incohérence.


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Lire la suite: www.libertepolitique.com

Chantal Delsol: "La morale laïque, une nouvelle religion pour la République ?"


Chantal Delsol : "Peut-on enseigner la morale universelle ?"






Intervention de Chantal Delsol, lors du colloque de l'Observatoire socio-politique du diocèse de Fréjus-Toulon, "La morale laïque, une nouvelle religion pour la République ?", du 22 février dernier. 

La philosophe répond à la question : "Peut-on enseigner une loi morale universelle ? " 

L'homme ne peut accéder à l'universel sans être lui-même... particulier. Ce que refuse le monde contemporain, post-moderne.

Voir également l'intervention d'Henri Hude : "La loi naturelle et le bien commun, quelle citoyenneté ?"

Les actes du colloque de Toulon seront publiés par la revue Liberté Politique, partenaire ducolloque.



Source: www.libertepolitique.com

Cardinal Müller: nous ne voulons pas seulement défendre le mariage et la famille, nous voulons aussi soutenir le développement de la famille dans notre société.


Le cardinal Müller rappelle l'impossibilité 
pour les "divorcés remariés" de communier



Le Préfet de la Congrégation pour la doctrine de la foi rappelle dans une interview publiée mardi par La Stampa :


« Le dogme de l'Eglise n'est pas n'importe quelle théorie fabriquée par quelques théologiens, il s'agit de la doctrine de l'Eglise, rien de moins que la parole de Jésus-Christ, qui est très claire. Je ne peux pas changer la doctrine de l'Eglise ».
Dans le même entretien, il a dénoncé « une idéologie qui s'étend contre la famille, et contre le mariage ».


« Il existe évidemment et il a toujours existé des difficultés individuelles et personnelles dans le mariage, mais ici la question est celle du mariage en tant qu'institution divine. (…) Nous ne voulons pas seulement défendre le mariage et la famille, nous voulons aussi soutenir le développement de la famille dans notre société. Jésus-Christ a clairement institué le mariage en tant que sacrement, avec les éléments de l'indissolubilité et de la bipolarité des deux sexes. »
« Le ministère ne peut avoir une conception différente de celle de la doctrine, la doctrine et le soin pastoral sont la même chose. Jésus-Christ en tant que pasteur et enseignant et Jésus-Christ en tant que parole ne sont pas des personnes différentes. Non, la doctrine de l'Eglise est très claire. Nous devons rechercher des manières pour développer le soin pastoral en faveur du mariage, mais pas seulement pour les divorcés-remariés, mais pour ceux qui vivent dans le mariage. Nous ne pouvons pas toujours nous focaliser sur cette seule question de savoir s'ils peuvent communier ou non. Les problèmes et les blessures résident dans le divorce, les enfants qui ne peuvent plus avoir leurs parents et qui sont contraints de vivre avec d'autres qui ne sont pas leurs parents : voilà les problèmes. »

« Nous ne pouvons pas amoindrir la révélation et la parole de Jésus-Christ parce que tant de catholiques ne connaissent pas la réalité. » « Nombreux sont ceux qui ne participent pas à la messe dominicale parce qu'ils ne connaissent pas sa valeur pour leurs vies. Nous ne pouvons pas dire, par voie de conséquence, que la messe est moins importante ! Ce serait un paradoxe si l'Eglise disait, parce que tous ne connaissent pas la vérité, que la vérité n'est pas obligatoire pour l'avenir. »

Il faudrait aussi cesser d'utiliser l’expression de « divorcé-remarié » qui est un véritable oxymore, puisqu’au regard de la Foi il n’y a pas plus de « divorcés » que de « remariés ». Le seul cas de remariage est celui qui fait suite à un veuvage. En fait « divorcés-remariés » signifie : « adultères publics ». Et là on comprend mieux pourquoi l'Eglise ne peut cautionner cette pratique.

El Salvador's presidential election puts the nation at a crossroads. Will they continue down the path of Venezuelan-style revolution, or choose a new path towards free enterprise and political freedom?


Is El Salvador the next Venezuela?



FMLN presidential candidate Cerén hailed the revolution in Venezuela, in a speech in January 2013, as “a light that will illuminate … the world.” 
The violence and lawlessness in Venezuela today is a direct consequence 
of that revolution, because the late leader Hugo Chávez smashed 
the country’s democratic institutions and rule of law so that he could 
govern arbitrarily and conceal his regime’s corruption.



Recent revelations about secret dealings by El Salvador’s ruling party with street gangsters and international narcotraffickers have many in that country worried that they may be drifting toward the lawlessness that has spawned chaos in Venezuela.

Indeed, as Venezuela’s oil aid dries up, the FMLN ( Frente Farabundo Martí para la Liberación Nacional) party might rely even more on the proceeds from criminal activities — putting El Salvador on the wrong side of U.S. anti-drug efforts. So, the stakes are high in the presidential run-off election on March 9.

Read more:  www.miamiherald.com

Le slaviste Georges Nivat écrit à son ami éditeur et philosophe Constantin Sigov, qui se trouve sur la place de l’Indépendance à Kiev


Lettre à un ami ukrainien

Par Georges Nivat

En réponse à la lettre de Constantin Sigov, «Surmonter le défi de la peur à Kiev», parue dans «LeMonde» du 3 février 2014. Constantin Sigov est professeur de philosophie, fondateur et directeur des Editions «Dukh i Litera» (l’Esprit et la Lettre) 

Mon cher Constantin, tu as écrit un témoignage enflammé qui contient aussi une analyse précise et unportrait magnifique de Liza, l’infirme qui organise le secours aux blessés.

Nous n’aurions pas pu l’écrire! De loin nous n’avons pas la possibilité de ce cri du cœur, mais ton cri, nous l’entendons. Oui, l’Europe d’aujourd’hui s’est faite contre les deux totalitarismes du siècle passé, en deux étapes: l’Ouest se cicatrisant lui-même contre son proche suicide collectif, avec les Jean Monnet, les Elie Wiesel, les Paul Celan, puis l’Est apportant sa lutte passionnée contre le communisme version stalinienne, avec les héros que nous avons aimés, vénérés! Soljenitsyne, Andreï Sakharov, Natalia Gorbanevskaïa, Walesa, Jean Paul II, Havel, Patocka!

Va-t-on vers une troisième étape, un troisième souffle de l’Europe? Peut-être. Je ne puis le dire. La grande différence étant qu’il n’y a pas de héros charismatique pour symboliser et porter la nouvelle révolte. L’époque semble s’y opposer par sa porosité informatique, qui abolit la distance, et la distance est sans doute nécessaire au prophétisme. Et puis nous zappons tous d’un malheur à l’autre…

Pour comprendre ce qui se passe chez toi, il nous faut relire Michelet, l’historien – prophète de la Révolution française. Mais toi, ton fils, tes amis, n’en avez évidemment pas le temps. Vous êtes l’Ukraine européenne, tout autant que vous êtes l’Ukraine russophile, je me rappelle tant de colloques où nous parlions l’une et l’autre langue.

Cette nuit les choses, hélas, hélas! se sont rapprochées de la guerre civile, et ce dont nous avions peur est peut-être là. Toi et toute l’Université «Académie Mohyla», enseignants et étudiants, vous êtes engagés, je le comprends, je vous connais, je vous ai écoutés, vous m’avez reçu, et même fait votre docteur honoris causa. Ton fils a passé des nuits sur la place du Maïdan, et je ne connais pas de jeune homme plus doux que lui. Tu viens de me dire que tu y retournes, toi l’éditeur de Paul Ricœur, Emmanuel Levinas, tant d’auteurs européens qui sont devenus ukrainiens depuis que tu as fondé la maison d’édition «L’Esprit et la lettre». Tu nous as aussi donné de merveilleux, tragiques poètes ukrainiens, comme le grand Vasyl Stus. L’esprit et la lettre… 

L’esprit de la liberté souffle, mais il souffle en rafales. J’espère que la violence va s’arrêter, qu’on aura le temps et la force de revenir à la lettre.

Tu représentes l’Ukraine nouvelle qui ne renie rien du passé commun avec la Russie, mais qui veut avancer. Tu sais que la dénonciation de la famine provoquée de 1932 a commencé avec Vassili Grossman, le romancier russe juif qui l’a mise en scène dans le chuchotis bouleversant du héros de Tout passe. Ce que vous faites, vous les Européens russophiles de Kiev, est utile à la Russie, à nous Européens de l’Ouest, et c’est pour ton pays le mieux qu’on puisse faire. N’oubliez pas la part d’Ukraine qui soit reste indifférente, soit est contre. Je ne peux l’apprécier, mais je suppose qu’elle est là, quelque part. Car celui que tu nommes l’Usurpateur fut élu, mais le scrutin universel n’apporte pas toujours la justice, ni la vérité. Deux critères qui ne relèvent pas du suffrage universel.

Avant les élections libres il faudra la réconciliation, puis l’alternance, nécessaire à toute vraie démocratie, car il est bon que les hommes au pouvoir soient soumis au contrôle de leur propre pays.

Une raison, Constantin, de me joindre à ton vœu, c’est que dans mon amour de la Russie, j’ai souvent redouté que l’Ukraine détachée de la Russie en arrive un jour inéluctablement à ce qui ressemblerait à un choix Europe-Russie. Mais ce ne doit pas être une alternative, et ce ne le sera pas, tu en es la preuve vivante. Votre Europe ne sera pas forcément l’Union européenne, et la Russie est européenne mais sa géographie commande souvent à son histoire. Et votre Ukraine future devra un jour être un pont entre Europe d’Occident et Europe eurasienne de Russie, ce vaste condominium de peuples unis par la langue russe et qui tend la main au Japon et à l’Alaska de l’autre côté.

Notre Europe issue de la double lutte conte le nazisme et ses ruines, contre le communisme et son empire est certes devenue un gigantesque compromis, en manque d’idéal. Mais c’est un compromis auquel nous sommes attachés, en dépit de tout, car il comprend une part de paix intérieure, de paix du cœur. Nous aimerions qu’il comprenne plus de fraternité. Le souffle qui vient de chez vous nous est utile, mais la violence doit cesser. Ta lettre à nous, Européens, nous fait du bien. A notre tour nous voulons te faire du bien, par notre compréhension, notre amour, notre sympathie au sens fort du mot.

En te lisant, je voyais devant mes yeux une Ukraine à la Delacroix! 

Fasse Dieu que ce ne soit pas une Ukraine à la Goya! 

Nous manquons douloureusement de souffle aujour​d’hui. 

Craignons que ne vienne un Bonaparte. 

Appelons plutôt un Jean Paul II, un Sakharov, un Havel ou un Mandela


Lire la suite: www.letemps.ch/

Ukraine : plus on laisse agir un dictateur, en herbe ou confirmé, plus son appétit croit. Et il n’est jamais rassasié. Toujours plus ! est son moto.


La revanche avortée de Maître Poutine

par Gilles Hertzog

Reste, à l’évidence, que la Russie n’a pas dit son dernier mot, que ses moyens d’enrayer le cours nouveau à Kiev sont énormes, pour peu que l’Europe ne se substitue pas rapidement aux roubles de la servitude et, bien davantage, n’ancre pas sans tarder l’Ukraine à elle-même, par une adhésion accélérée, serait-elle temporairement symbolique, à l’Union et ses institutions.

La chute de l’URSS fut la plus grande catastrophe géopolitique du XXè siècle, a dit un jour Poutine. Et Gorbatchev était un traître à la solde des Occidentaux. Les pays baltes, ces confettis d’empire, en profitèrent pour recouvrer leur indépendance et, pis, encore, adhérer à l‘Europe.

Le maître du Kremlin n’aura eu cesse, depuis dix ans, de venger cet affront. Et sa meilleure revanche contre cet Occident qui, dans sa tête, mit à terre la puissante Union Soviétique et entraina son démembrement, c’était l’Ukraine. Jusqu’à ce que son obligé, Ianoukovitch, la place Maïdan ne cédant pas sous les balles des snipers, jette l‘éponge et s’enfuit, piètre serviteur pas fichu d’aller jusqu’au bout, qui, patatrac, plombe son maître trop confiant et, l’opération se retournant contre lui, lui fait perdre la face.

La revanche de Poutine sur l’Occident honni n’était pas, hier, la Tchétchénie noyée dans le sang, ni la Géorgie amputée par la force de l’Ossétie, ces deux mises au pas relevant de la reconstitution intérieure de l’empire. Pas la Syrie soutenue à bout de bras contre l’Occident, selon la solidarité bien comprise entre autocrates et dictateurs. Non, c’était l’Ukraine ! L’Ukraine, ce beau et gros morceau, qui, l’impudente, entendait se détacher de la tutelle du grand frère et devenir pleinement européenne. Tentation de l’Occident ? Niet, Pas de ça, Lisette ! Retour par la force, via un Ianoukovic aux ordres, d’un morceau d’Europe dans le giron impérial. Enfin, oui, un morceau d’Europe, et quel morceau ! enlevé à l’Europe avant même qu’elle l’ait reçu en son sein. Réponse du berger russe, vingt ans plus tard, à la bergère Europe.

L’Europe, le vrai adversaire de la Russie, pour Poutine. Poutine, cet homme qui commença sa carrière de kégébiste aux avant-postes du communisme armé en Allemagne de l‘Est, aux bords de cette Europe qui fascine la Russie pour sa liberté autant que la Russie de toujours la rejette d’instinct, mais dont tout l’Est européen, de Leipzig à Lvov, de Gdansk à Varna, était alors à elle, captif de Moscou. L’Europe, dont la Russie avait sa part, et quelle part ! Et puis, plus rien. Dislocation du glacis est-européen. Poutine, avec tous ses semblables, dut reculer jusqu’à Moscou en quelques mois à peine, perdant cette part d’Europe sous sa garde et sa férule. Insoutenable recul, honteuse débandade, humiliation, comparable, toutes proportions gardées, à celle d’un soldat nommé Hitler au sortir de la Première guerre mondiale dans l’Allemagne vaincue.

Idéologie de la revanche. Reprendre par la force à l’Europe une part d’elle-même, cette Ukraine du Maïdan.
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Lirela suite: laregledujeu.org

Though writing in the 19th century, Bl. John Henry Newman anticipated the fervor of today’s evangelical atheists who seek to disabuse us of what they consider the illusions of faith.






When we speak of a saint, we usually have in mind someone of extraordinary holiness, someone of heroic virtue, someone animated by God’s love and dedicated to his service. Then, again, we think of someone whose devotion to God is so extraordinary that he commands the public veneration of the faithful.

And yet when we think of actual saints, we begin to see the inadequacy of such general terms. Although they share a common love of the Creator and a common love of his creatures, the saints are so different, so unique. To name saints dear to the subject of this essay—St. Paul, St. Chrysostom, St. Athanasius, St. Ambrose, St. Gregory the First, St. Leo the Great, St. Charles Borromeo, St. Philip Neri—is to be reminded of just how profoundly different the saints are. As Chesterton once observed, “It is a real case against conventional hagiography that it sometimes tends to make all saints seem to be the same. Whereas in fact no men are more different than saints; not even murderers.” Defining them all with one definition hardly does them justice. So our general definitions of sanctity must always be a kind of broad-brush shorthand, even if the personal force of sanctity is unmistakable.

Just a few months ago there was a piece in the Catholic Herald about Father Dominic Barberi, the Passionist who received Newman into the Church, in which the author noted how “Dominic’s encounter with Newman at Littlemore in October 1845 may perhaps be only a small part of his story, but it is important nevertheless. This is because Newman himself tells us that he entered the Catholic Church precisely at that moment because of the supernatural qualities he recognized instantly in the Italian missionary. ‘When his form came into sight, I was moved to the depths in the strangest way,’ Newman wrote years later. ‘His very look had about it something holy.’” Before meeting Blessed Dominic, Newman was intellectually convinced of the truth of the Church but in the presence of Dominic’s sanctity he was able to recognize that his heart had come to the same conviction.

Then, again, when Dominic wrote that the most formidable obstacles to the one true faith in England were “the extreme ignorance and indeed indifference” of the English people to their own salvation, he also gave Newman something of his own mission, which animates all of his Catholic work. In this essay, I shall endeavor to capture something of the specific sanctity that can be found in the life and works of Blessed John Henry Newman, which sets him apart from other saints and yet makes him so entirely at home in the Communion of Saints.

Newman’s humility

The first thing that we should bear in mind about Newman, when it comes to his sanctity, is that there was nothing sanctimonious about it. In 1850, when a woman wrote to tell him how she and a friend thought him a saint, Newman replied with characteristically witty self-deprecation.

I return you Miss Moore’s letter. You must undeceive her about me, though I suppose she uses words in a general sense. She called Newman a saint. I have nothing of a Saint about me as every one knows, and it is a severe (and salutary) mortification to be thought next door to one. I may have a high view of many things, but it is the consequence of education and of a peculiar cast of intellect—but this is very different from being what I admire. I have no tendency to be a saint—it is a sad thing to say. Saints are not literary men, they do not love the classics, they do not write Tales. I may be well enough in my way, but it is not the ‘high line.’ People ought to feel this, most people do. But those who are at a distance have fee-fa-fum notions about one. It is enough for me to black the saints’ shoes—if St. Philip uses blacking, in heaven.

This confirms something Chesterton once said, in that glorious book of his on St. Thomas, “The holy man conceals his holiness; that is the one invariable rule.”

What gives Newman’s sanctity its abiding appeal is that it is rooted in his recognition that sanctity is not something with which most of us are comfortable. Some of this insight came from his own experience: both his brothers became apostates. One renounced Christianity for the utopian socialism of Robert Owen and the other left Christianity altogether for Unitarianism. Indeed, he even went so far as to advocate euthanasia. Then, again, Newman could see from growing up in the Church of England that many English Christians were only nominally Christian; they professed what they scarcely knew how to practice.

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The Church's teaching on faith and morals is not going to change.




There are a lot of people who are going to be surprised 
by how Catholic the Pope really is

Who, exactly, is reassuring whom? And about what?

Those were my thoughts upon reading David Gibson's spin-laden, cliché-soaked piece,“U.S. Cardinal Raymond Burke: Pope Francis opposes abortion and gay marriage” (Feb 21, 2014), for Religion News Service. Gibson's report was on an essay by Cardinal Burke, who is Prefect of the Sacred Tribunal of the Apostolic Signatura, titled “The Pope’s radical call to the new evangelization”, for L'Osservatore Romano earlier the same day.

Gibson's first sentence immediately tries to stuff Cardinal Burke's essay into a narrow, politicized framework:

As Pope Francis led the world’s cardinals in talks aimed at shifting the church’s emphasis from following rules to preaching mercy, a senior American cardinal took to the pages of the Vatican newspaper on Friday (Feb. 21) to reassure conservatives that Francis remains opposed to abortion and gay marriage.

Cardinal Burke, you see, isn't so much interested in reflecting upon the words and actions of Pope Francis as he is in gently patting the furrowed brows of fretting, simplistic Catholics who might wonder if the Holy Father is, in fact, on board with the Church's perennial teachings on issues of life, sexuality, and related matters. Or, more bluntly: Cardinal Burke is a politician first, and pastor second.

Gibson's piece is an outstanding example of bad Catholic journalism—both as the work of a Catholic and in its representation of the topic at hand. Two rhetorical tactics are immediately evident: the skewed portrayal of Cardinal Burke as a disgruntled, even angry, reactionary and the use of Gibson's favorite negative descriptive: “conservative”:

Cardinal Raymond Burke acknowledged that the pope has said the church “cannot insist only on issues related to abortion, gay marriage and the use of contraceptive methods.” But in his toughly worded column in L’Osservatore Romano, the former archbishop of St. Louis blasted those “whose hearts are hardened against the truth” for trying to twist Francis’ words to their own ends.

Burke, an outspoken conservative who has headed the Vatican’s highest court since 2008, said Francis in fact strongly backs the church’s teaching on those topics. He said the pope is simply trying to find ways to convince people to hear the church’s message despite the “galloping de-Christianization in the West.”


For those who rely only on Gibson's description, Burke's essay sounds like the shrill manifesto of a man desperate—the term “conservative unease” is used twice!—to spin the words of Francis to his own, well, “conservative” agenda. In fact, it is Gibson who is spinning—slyly, if not shrilly—the words of Burke. To take just one more blatant example:

Burke said he was prompted to write his column after a recent visit to the U.S. in which he became alarmed that so many people wanted to know whether the pope’s statements about not judging gays and his stress on mercy and welcoming everyone augured a change in church doctrine.

Was Burke, in fact, “alarmed”? I guess that depends on whether or not you are willing to take him at his own word; for the sake of accuracy and fairness, I'll do so here:

During a recent visit to the United States, I was repeatedly impressed by how deeply Pope Francis has penetrated the national conversation on a whole range of issues. His special gift of expressing direct care for each and all has resonated strongly with many in my homeland.

At the same time, I noted a certain questioning about whether Pope Francis has altered or is about to alter the Church’s teaching on a number of the critical moral issues of our time, for example, the teaching on the inviolable dignity of innocent human life, and the integrity of marriage and the family. Those who questioned me in the matter were surprised to learn that the Holy Father has in fact affirmed the unchanging and unchangeable truths of the Church’s teaching on these very questions. They had developed a quite different impression as a result of the popular presentation of Pope Francis and his views.


If there is a note of alarm here, I don't see it. In fact, the piece is one of the best yet written about the thought and focus of Pope Francis, and it is all the more valuable because Cardinal Burke is a member of the Curia and is one of the most highly placed American prelates in the Church. That Gibson, whose affinity for trendy, dissenting causes is hard to hide, tries to paint the cardinal into the ideological corner says far more about Gibson and like-minded Catholics than it does about Burke. Much more. This is the same reporter, after all, whose (metaphorical) head nearly split in two when he wrote a rather humorous piece for The Washington Post in October 2009 that sought to cram Benedict XVI into the convenient but tired “conservative-liberal” bottle. (For even more of this nonsense, see my May 2009 Insight Scoop post, “Straw men by the left, straw men from the left”.)

Yes, this topic of empty labels is one I've written about before. But it's worth keeping front and center, especially as there are going to be many more reports about what Francis and the bishops are discussing and considering when it comes to family life, marriage, and a host of closely related matters. The continual spin since last summer is that Francis is on the cusp of changing Church teaching, doctrine, and practice, perhaps allowing divorced and remarried Catholics to received Holy Communion. The pontiff, in less than a year, has gotten the attention of the media, who almost uniformly expect him to “update” the Church, make Catholicism “relevant”, and pull medieval-minded Catholics into the bright light of the 21st century.

And then there are those Catholics who have been waiting since the 1960s—either literally or via a sort of chronological and ideological symbiosis—for The Big, Dramatic Change That Will Transform the Catholic Church Forever. Is this the year?

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Read more: www.catholicworldreport.com

UK - Former Anglican communities: the Ordinariate has challenged us all: do we really believe in the unity-in-diversity that has been the talk at so many ecumenical events?






Some former Anglican communities thrive, some still struggle
 to find a permanent home after crossing the Tiber.


“Auntie Joanna, can I help you with your knitting?”

The difference between tapestry and knitting was not apparent to an uninitiated small boy, fascinated by the intricacies of bright wool and needles. Not one to discourage youthful enthusiasm, I gingerly showed my young nephew how to insert the wool through the mesh with the special blunt-ended needle, and with deep breaths of satisfaction he produced some creditable stitches. His contribution to the kneeler for St. Anselm’s, Pembury was small, but in a way he was helping to make history.

There are a great many magnificent and ancient churches in England, but St Anselm’s is not one of them. It’s a smallish, bleak hall, standing on a green rising up from the main road in Pembury, a village near Tunbridge Wells in Kent. It has bare walls, plastic chairs, a cramped feel, and no external ornaments to indicate its sacred use. And it is rented out for much of the week for ballet classes and a children’s playgroup.

But the reason for its place in history is important. The hall is part of the Catholic parish of Tunbridge Wells. When Pope Benedict XVI created the Ordinariate of Our Lady of Walsingham, an Anglican clergyman, the Rev. Ed Tomlinson—then vicar of a large Anglican church in Tunbridge Wells—responded with eagerness. Pope Benedict’s call, in his message Anglicanorum Coetibus—“to groups of Anglicans”—was an invitation to come into full communion with the Catholic Church, bringing along Anglican traditions, music, and what has been generally described as “Anglican patrimony.”

Father Ed—having been ordained a Catholic priest after due discernment, study, and acceptance—had to give up the beautiful church of which he had been vicar. He and his wife and small children faced a future which, humanly speaking, looked uncertain. What would the Catholic Church do with a married priest (the Church dispenses, in this very specific instance, from celibacy) and a group of faithful people from his former Anglican flock?

The solution was to appoint him as an assistant priest at the Catholic parish of St. Augustine in Tunbridge Wells parish, and he was given charge of the “outstation” at Pembury. Now, with generous financial support from the diocese (Southwark) and elsewhere, the hall will become an attractive church, serving what is already a small but thriving congregation.

And one tiny contribution to this will be the tapestry-stitched kneelers, replacing the hideous brown rubber mats that are in current use. Hence my busy stitching and the support of the Friends of the Ordinariate, which has donated to the project.

However, the Ordinariate story is not everywhere such a happy one. Some Ordinariate priests have been effectively merged into the normal Catholic diocesan structure, where sometimes the only Catholic parish available is many miles from their old Anglican one. This means they are cut off from the flock who came with them “across the Tiber,” and who now find that they can no longer remain as a group and simply have to attend Mass at a local church.

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Read more: www.catholicworldreport.com

Résultats de récentes analyses datant le Saint-Suaire à -33 av. Jésus Christ


La nouvelle datation du Linceul de Turin relance le débat

par Paul Monin



Giulio Fanti, professeur à l’Université de Padoue, publie ce mois-ci les résultats de récentes analyses datant le Saint-Suaire à -33 av. Jésus Christ. Le débat est relancé.

En 1988, les Professeurs E. Hall et R. Hedges, ainsi que le Docteur M. Tite annonçaient fièrement à la presse que les tests de datation du Suaire de Turin au carbone 14 avaient révélé que l’étoffe remontait au 14e siècle. Lors de leur conférence de presse, ils avaient alors écrit sur un tableau noirinstallé derrière eux « 1260-1390 ! ».

C’est en réponse à ce point d’exclamation rageur que Giulio Fanti, professeur de mécaniques et thermiques à l’Université de Padoue, publie en ce mois de février 2014 un ouvrage intitulé : Saint-Suaire : 1er siècle ap. JC ! Cet ouvrage vient compléter ’étude pluridisciplinaire dirigée par le professeur Fanti, dont les résultats ont été publiés l’année dernière au mois de Mars 2013, sous le titre Les mystères du Saint Suaire.




 
Ce livre, comme son nom l’indique, relance le débat sur la date du Saint-Suaire. Il met en doute la datation au carbone 14 de 1988, et propose une nouvelle date, établie grâce à trois nouvelles analyses : deux chimiques (l’une réalisée avec le système de spectroscopie infrarouge de Fourier, l’autre avec la spectroscopie Raman) et une mécanique multiparamétrique.

La datation de 1988 mise en doute

Dans cet ouvrage, il est démontré que la datation au radiocarbone n’est pas scientifiquement fiable, car la méthode employée n’a pas respecté les protocoles d’usage. En effet, elle ne prend pas en compte les effets environnementaux éventuels qui auraient pu altérer la quantité de carbone 14 dans le fragment de tissu analysé, comme l’incendie de 1532, ou les différente méthodes de conservation.

De nombreux articles scientifiques ont remis en cause la datation de 1988. Notamment sur la manière dont a été effectuée la sélection deséchantillons et leur traitement. En effet, l’échantillon examiné en 1988 ne provient pas de l’image du corps du suaire, mais d’une autre zone du tissu, qui aurait pu être rajouté au moyen âge. Comme en 1534, lorsque les sœurs de l’ordre des clarisses avaient cousu des pièces de lin sur la toile originale.

Le professeur Jérôme Lejeune lui même s'était penché sur cette question, à la fin de sa vie. Il avait en effet pu étudier le Codex Pray - un document écrit entre 1192 et 1195 - à la Bibliothèque nationale de Budapest. Il est fait état dans ce document d'un linceul vénéré à Constantinople. Détail surprenant : les représentations de ce linceul montrent 4 trous dans l'étoffe, disposés en forme de L, exactement comme sur le Saint-Suaire actuel. Ce manuscrit ayant été écrit avant la date établie par la datation au carbone 14 de 1988, le Linceul de Turin serait donc bien plus ancien que ce que les scientifiques pensaient.

De nouveaux résultats

Les résultats des analyses réalisés par l’équipe du professeur Fanti confirmeraient tous que le lin du linceul date bien de l’époque où Jésus-Christ a été crucifié à Jérusalem.

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Lire la suite: www.aleteia.org

jueves, 27 de febrero de 2014

C.S. Lewis: la gran cuestión filosófica y teológica del sufrimiento



C.S. Lewis y el problema del dolor



26.2.14. El congreso sobre C.S. Lewis y J.R.R. Tolkien celebrado estos días en el CEU-San Pablo sirve para animar a la lectura de ambos escritores, tan decisivos en la formación de la cultura católica del siglo XX, incluso sin ser católico formalmente el primero de ellos.

En 1993 Anthony Hopkins, bajo la dirección de Richard Attenborough, dio vida a Lewis en Tierras de penumbra, donde plantea en toda su crudeza la gran cuestión filosófica y teológica del sufrimiento, que tanto le atormentó. Tras ver la escena, pincha aquí o aquípara algunos ejemplos del potencial cristianizador de ambos autores.

Ver video aquí: videos.religionenlibertad.com

"Dictatorship of relativism.": people contradict the principle of non-contradiction all the time.


The Principle of Non-Contradiction, Contradicted

by Father George W. Rutler


Dante's thought was so greatly shaped by Aristotle that he called him "The Philosopher" rather as it is customary to call Saint Paul "The Apostle." He placed Aristotle in a sort of suburb of Heaven, for Aristotle's logical thought was a noble anticipation of Christ the Word, or Logos, as the litmus test for all logical thought. 

Aristotle applied his "Principle of Non-Contradiction" in several ways, but the third way, most pertinent to daily conversation, means that two statements that are opposite cannot both be true.

Like all great truths, this seems so obvious that it should hardly need to be pointed out. But people contradict the principle of non-contradiction all the time. 

 It is easy to slip into this mistake out of fuzzy courtesy — which in the extreme is a form of sentimentality — as when someone says, "That may be true for you, but it is not true for me," or, "All religions are the same." Pope Benedict XVI saw this as so great a danger to logical living that he spoke of it as a "dictatorship of relativism."

To propose that opposite assertions can be true is harshly to cancel out truth. In our grammar, two negatives make a positive, but to say that a negative and a positive make a positive would be to say that nothing is really positive. Then to say that Christ is and is not the Living Word is to say that the Word is just a word. This "dictatorship" inevitably tries to crush any assertion that there is such a thing as logic at all.



Read more: www.catholiceducation.org

Hollande: le chômage n’est certes pas un sujet de plaisanterie...



par Christian Vanneste

Le chômage n’est certes pas un sujet de plaisanterie. 

Le gouvernement parvient cependant à le faire passer de la tragédie pour ceux qui le subissent à la comédie pour ceux qui doivent commenter les pitoyables déclarations des Ministres, le premier en tête, comme il se doit. 

On est d’abord chez Molière lorsque les médecins se penchent sur le malade et ne cessent de répéter : « le pacte de responsabilité, le pacte de responsabilité, vous dis-je », désignant le remède et non la cause de la maladie comme le faisait Toinette dans le Malade Imaginaire. 

Il est vrai qu’ici, ce sont plutôt les médecins qui sont malades.

L’un d’entre eux, Vidalies, comme un personnage de Feydeau libéré de l’hypnose, vient de découvrir doctement qu’on ne pouvait voir diminuer le chômage qu’à partir de 1,5% de croissance. 

On se demande alors pourquoi le Président et ses ministres ont attendu l’inversion de la courbe comme d’autres attendent Godot sur la scène. 0,3 % de croissance sur l’année 2013 est meilleur que prévu et quasi inespéré. 

Ce n’était donc pas très lucide, ou honnête, ou compétent de faire semblant de croire à l’inversion de la courbe. Celle-ci augmente en ligne droite au mois de Janvier avec une hausse de 0,3% et nous conduit à un record. 

Comme prévu, le chômage s’accroît chez les seniors et ne diminue plus chez les jeunes.

Avec la CGT qui rencontre le Medef, on retourne chez Molière. 

Le Medef serait Tartuffe. Il aurait joué les faux dévots en faisant croire à la sincérité de ses promesses d’embauches. 

Elles auraient séduit Orgon-Hollande prêt à se convertir au social-libéralisme et à annoncer ses dons à la nouvelle foi avec des baisses de charges. 

Seulement, le converti veut son indulgence plénière. 

Il veut des contreparties : les embauches promises. 

Et là, on passe chez Marivaux avec, au choix, la Méprise ou la Double Inconstance.


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Lire la suite: www.christianvanneste.fr

If economic systems must be moral in their operations and effects to possess legitimacy, then ad hoc goals that reflect mere political expediency or eclectic ideology will not suffice as the underlayment of market design.


Reckoning with Markets: 
Moral Reflection in Economics




Review of Reckoning with Markets: The Role of Moral Reflection in Economics
by James Halteman and Edd Noell. (Oxford University Press, 2012) 


Sometimes a book has considerable value for readers beyond its primary audience. Such is the case for a slender hardback written by two professors teaching business and economics at two Christian colleges (Wheaton in Illinois and Westmont in California). Not surprisingly, Reckoning with Markets seems aimed for Christian college students. Nonetheless, readers need not hail from collegiate environments to gain from moral reflections on economic justice and an exploration of developments in economic thought today.

Chapter one begins with a hypothetical conversation between various thinkers such as Aristotle, Aquinas, Adam Smith, Mill, Marx and Keynes. The dialogue is parceled out in snippets of thought somewhat less than synergistic. Fortunately, the educative value of the book grows as one moves along. Chapter two offers an assortment of moral reflections drawn from biblical literature and the ancient Mediterranean world. Chapter three leads the conversation into the scholastic period, with considerable attention given Thomas Aquinas. Unfocused readers will probably finish the first three chapters without a clear sense of the book's purpose.

Fortunately, chapter four sheds light on the preparatory nature of the preceding work. The authors explain: "In much of the discussion so far, moral reflection has been related to a sense of telos or the purpose to which human action is directed. Only when there is a goal can there be meaningful discussion about what is right and wrong or good and bad." If the reader returns to the first three chapters with this notion in mind, the rationale of what has gone before becomes evident. How can a society judge the merits of one economic pathway or another until there is a collective understanding about the purposes of life? There must be an organizing schema and a belief system. A sustainable public interest must be identified and agreed upon—democratically or by other legitimate means—before the merits of various acts can be asserted. It is only when merit is judged that we have a means by which to evaluate the prudence of economic rewards.

If economic systems must be moral in their operations and effects to possess legitimacy, then ad hoc goals that reflect mere political expediency or eclectic ideology will not suffice as the underlayment of market design.
As Halteman and Noell suggest, societal goals cannot have moral import unless they have consequence and stability.
Additionally, societal goals cannot exist in merely general terms.


It is insufficient in evaluating economic morality to say that utility, happiness and the good life represent the national mission or ethos, as each of these goals potentially incorporates so many conflicting agendas that coordinated societal initiatives are possible only at the cost of sacrificing any real meaning in the goals.

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Read more: www.acton.org

The former KGB colonel will not remain idle: no territory is more central to this mission than Ukraine, which Mr. Putin sees as a Russian territory. Not entirely without reason


Why Putin’s gaze is fixed on Ukraine

By Clifford D. May


Russian President Vladimir Putin is not happy. The government he backed in Ukraine has collapsed. The Ukrainian leader he favored, Viktor Yanukovych is on the run, accused of the “mass murder” of protesters.

I am not so bold as to predict what Mr. Putin will do next. That he will take action — perhaps very bold action — should be the working assumption of American policy planners.

On one level, Mr. Putin is a simple man: He likes to hunt, fish and ride horses bareback. Those who cross him end up in cages in Siberia — or worse. Employing Machiavellian principles, he has become, over the past 15 years, a neo-czar.

He also has demonstrated a remarkable ability to befuddle American leaders. In 2001, President George W. Bush looked into Mr. Putin’s eyes and came away with “a sense of his soul” — suggesting it resembled Thomas Jefferson rather than Ivan the Terrible.

Nevertheless, President Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton convinced themselves that it was Mr. Bush’s cowboy swagger — not conflicting geopolitical interests — that were the root cause of Russo-American tensions.

Their solution: “Reset” relations with the Kremlin. That this was a misguided policy became evident when Mrs. Clinton, with elaborate fanfare, presented Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov with a button inscribed with the Russian word “peregruzka.” She believed it meant “reset.” In fact, it means “overcharge.” (Reset is “perezagruzka.” True, that’s only a two-letter mistake, but spelling matters when one letter separates “Obama” from “Osama.”)

Two things to keep in mind about Mr. Putin
  • First, just as a U.S. Marine is always a U.S. Marine, so a KGB colonel is always a KGB colonel. 
  • Second, he believes — and in 2005 stated clearly — that the “demise of the Soviet Union was the greatest geopolitical catastrophe” of the 20th century.
This does not imply that he is a communist. 

Ideologies — indeed, ideas — are of little apparent interest to him. 

What he does care about is power — for himself, certainly — but also for the Russian nation and people. 

Under both czars and commissars, Russia commanded an empire. 

If Mr. Putin does not restore Russian hegemony over a vast swath of Eurasia, it won’t be for lack of effort.

No territory is more central to this mission than Ukraine, which Mr. Putin sees as a Russian territory. Not entirely without reason

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Read more: www.washingtontimes.com

What are the limits within which life can exist? What are the limits of the natural sciences in explaining life and its origins?



by William Carroll

Biology continues to offer us new and exciting insights into the world. These insights need to be integrated into a philosophical perspective that is richer than the reductive materialism that is often linked with the empirical sciences. In this endeavor, biology needs the philosophy of nature.

What are the limits within which life can exist? What are the limits of the natural sciences in explaining life and its origins?

I recently attended a fascinating lecture at Oxford on the existence of a variety of micro-organisms in what would seem an improbable environment: the Atacama Desert in northern Chile, which is the driest place on earth. Professor Rafael Vicuña, a distinguished biologist at the Catholic University of Chile, presented results of his research, which show how life has found ingenious ways to adapt to extreme conditions such as very low water availability, high salt concentration, and intense ultraviolet radiation.

This research is especially intriguing because the Atacama is seen as a terrestrial analogue for Mars. In fact, NASA is interested in the ways in which research in this desert might contribute to its astrobiology program. For some time, astrobiologists have been studying what are called extremophiles, organisms that live in extreme conditions. Do we get closer to understanding the origin of life the more we advance in our knowledge of life at its frontiers?

It is precisely such a question that is properly in the domain of the philosophy of nature. It would be of considerable benefit for biologists and other natural scientists to become acquainted with the insights this discipline offers. The philosophy of nature is a more general science of nature than any of the diverse empirical sciences. It depends upon the various natural sciences to understand nature, but the philosophy of nature concerns topics that are not specific to any one of the sciences, but common to them all: the nature of change and time, how physical entities are unities (as distinct from mere heaps of elements), and what the differences are between the living and the non-living.

What can the philosophy of nature tell us about investigating the origin of life? First of all, it can help us to avoid the errors in various philosophical claims about life and its origins. Questions concerning the nature of living thingsprecisely as living have currency, in part, because of the persistence in modern culture of various materialist, mechanist, and reductionist accounts of living and non-living entities that eliminate any real, qualitative distinction between the living and the non-living.

There are many who, by accepting a form of materialism and reductionism—that is, by insisting that living things are nothing more than the sum of their physical components—conclude that a question such as “What is life?” is, at the very least, not a biological question, and probably is best rejected as a question without content. So we hear that one ought to resist using the term “life” to describe what is just a highly sophisticated movement of matter. In an important sense, according to such a view, “life,” as something other than matter in motion, does not exist. Life, however, is more resilient than attempts to eliminate it as a category of scientific discourse, not to mention as a feature of nature!

In The Atheist's Guide to Reality: Enjoying Life without Illusions, Alex Rosenberg, professor of philosophy at Duke University, tells us that the combination of contemporary physics and evolutionary biology offers an exhaustive account of everything that exists. He enthusiastically embraces “scientism” and its nihilistic consequences. Rosenberg claims:

If we accept evolution as the mechanism that gave rise to us, we understand that we are nothing more than a highly ordered collection of bio-molecules. Molecular biology has made fantastic strides over the last fifty years, and its goal is to explain all the peculiarities and details of life in terms of molecular interactions. A central tenet of molecular biology is that that is all there is.

For those scientists and philosophers who embrace some form of materialism, there is a strict disjunction: either we explain the living in terms of material, mechanically operating constituents, or in terms of some mysterious spiritual substance, some vital force. There is no substitute for materialism but magic, for there is no philosophical position other than materialism that is compatible with the science of biology. This is true, so the argument goes, because this mysterious substance, this vital force, yields itself even in theory to no method of investigation. Thus, it must be cast aside, leaving one with the inevitable conclusion that there is nothing more to living beings than their material parts.

The philosophical analysis that concludes that we must choose between materialism and vitalism, however, is based on a limited understanding of the options. Biologists and other natural scientists ought to avoid a philosophical interpretation of nature that reduces reality to the purely material and empirically observable.

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Read more: http://www.thepublicdiscourse.com


Crise ukrainienne/Révolution française: Il convient aujourd’hui de calmer les sans culottes de Maïdan et les Prussiens de Moscou


Antoine ARJAKOVSKY 
sur la situation ukrainienne


Entretien avec Antoine Arjakovsky, historien au Collège des Bernardins et Andreï Kourkov, écrivain ukrainien.Les médias on couvert et même parfois sur-couvert la crise ukrainienne. Mais qui sont ceux qui occupaient la place Maïdan ? Des néo-nazis ou des démocrates a l'occidentale ? Et plus largement quels sont les blocages et les mouvements de fond qui traversent la société ukrainienne ?

Voici une itw hier sur TV5Monde sur la situation ukrainienne. 


Celle-ci me fait de plus en plus penser à la révolution française. Il y a beaucoup d’analogies (prise de la Bastille, Marseillaise, fuite à Varennes, Valmy,…). 

Et pour éviter que cette révolution ne dérape il convient aujourd’hui de calmer les sans culottes de Maïdan et les Prussiens de Moscou. 

Sinon la peur et la pression sur les nouveaux constituants risque de faire tout déraper. 

Arsène Yatséniuk probable futur premier ministre jeudi prochain est en mesure de le faire, même si ce sera sûrement très douloureux. Il faut lui faire confiance.


Source: www.france-catholique.fr

Kiev: tout n’est pas fini, tout commence, en réalité !


L’Ukraine n’est pas devenue pro-occidentale !


par LES4V 

Croire que le président Ianoukovitch a déjà perdu la partie contre les partisans de l’adhésion à l’UE de l’Ukraine est aller trop vite en besogne.

Il a encore de trop bonnes cartes en mains pour ne pas tenter, y compris via les urnes, de conserver le pouvoir.

Certes, ses partisans russophones sont minoritaires dans son pays, mais ils bénéficient du soutien inconditionnel d’un très argenté et très puissant tuteur en la personne du nouveau tsar de toutes les Russies, Vladimir Poutine.

Celui-ci, en tant qu’ex-cadre du FSB, en bon professionnel de la manipulation des agents qu’il est resté, saura utiliser tous les éléments de « tenue en mains » de l’un d’eux quand il est utile à sa cause et celle de son pays.

Or, le président Ianoukovitch est plus qu’utile à la Russie ; il est quasiment indispensable ! Lui seul permet, avec ceux qui sont à sa botte, de contrôler les armes diplomatiques que la Russie peut utiliser contre l’Occident en ouvrant ou refermant l’arme du gaz qui passe sur leur territoire.

L’Ukraine est en faillite et, sans le pactole déversé par les Russes, le pays serait difficilement gouvernable par quelqu’un d’autre que lui ou l’un de ses féaux.

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Pastoral care of the family in the modern world requires clarity of doctrine—but it also requires much more. (what the Synods are and are not about)


Aim of Family Synods: 
Harmonize Doctrine and Pastoral Care



A recent interview of Cardinal Óscar Rodríguez Maradiaga in a German newspaper underscores the stress lines surrounding the upcoming synods, in October 2014 and October 2015, “On Pastoral Challenges of the Family in the Context of Evangelization.” It can help us to think more clearly about what those Synods are and are not about.

In a January l’Osservatore Romano article entitled “The Power of Grace,” the German Prefect for the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith—successor to Cardinal Ratzinger, second man named to that post by Pope Benedict XVI, and confirmed highest official of Pope Francis—Archbishop Gerhard Müller had laid out with pristine clarity the many arguments for why divorce and remarriage is theologically impossible, and thus Eucharistic communion is impossible for the civily remarried, who live, according to Jesus, in a state of continuing adultery. “The Power of Grace” to which the title of the article refers is the power of the sacrament to bind husband and wife together till death alone do them part.

During a trip to Archbishop Müller’s native Germany, Cardinal Maradiaga, coordinator of Pope Francis’s Council of eight Cardinal Advisors, made comments to the newspaper Kölner Stadt-Anzeiger that were critical of Archbishop Müller’s article. In the one paragraph of the article reprinted in the American press, Cardinal Maradiaga says, “Yes, I read it. And I thought, ‘Okay, perhaps you are right, but at the same time, perhaps not.’ I mean, I understand him: He is German—yes, I must say, he is most of all a Professor, a German theology professor. In his mentality, there is only right and wrong, that’s it. But I say, ‘The world, my brother, the world is not so. You must be a little flexible, when you hear other truths; you cannot just hear them and say, no, this is the borderline.” (The popular translation has said “the wall,” but that does not fit the context.)

What did Cardinal Maradiaga mean? It says more about the popular press than about Cardinal Maradiaga that he was taken (out of context) to mean that we should give communion to the remarried. The rest of his interview, unavailable in English, tells a more interesting story.

The context is a discussion of Pope Francis’s reform of the Curia. The interviewer, summarizing, says, “Priority for the care of souls?” Cardinal Maradiaga responds, “yes, more pastoral than doctrinal.” In the popular mentality, “pastoral” means “heterodox.” But Cardinal Maradiaga immediately clarifies that this is not what he means. “The Church’s teaching, the theology,” he says, echoing Francis, “is established. But we must see that we can instruct uneducated people in it.” He cites the Pope’s reference to the road to Emmaus: “we must warm their hearts” with the truths of faith.

This is the context in which the interviewer introduces remarriage. “But to warm hearts, don’t we need to change the doctrine? … Think of the controversy about those who are divorced and remarried!”

Cardinal Maradiaga responds unequivocally, “The Church is bound by God’s commandments. Christ said about marriage, ‘What God has joined, let no man separate.’ This word stands fast.” Support of remarriage is not an option. “But,” says the Cardinal, reiterating what he has just said, “there are many ways in which we can explain this teaching.” He mentions the frequently misunderstood topic of annulments as an example, and then says we should find ways to give a “more deeply incisive” explanation of Christ’s teaching.

“But,” he concludes, “we would be going in the wrong direction if we said that what is black today will be white tomorrow.” Before he says that Archbishop Müller sees only in black and white, he himself says that there is a black and white, a right and wrong. The difference is that there is more to the Church’s teaching than just right and wrong.

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Read more: www.crisismagazine.com

Specific ideas innate to Judaism and Christianity played a pivotal role in enabling the West to make and sustain political, legal and economic breakthroughs that eluded other civilizations.


Christianity: Foundation of Western Success



In his famous critique of John Stuart Mill, Mill and Liberalism (1963) the Cambridge historian Maurice Cowling underscored just how much the views advanced by self-identified liberals were underpinned by the conviction that their conception of the historical background to any number of events is more-or-less universally accepted. Sometimes they are right in making that assumption about others. Medieval Europe, for instance, is invariably understood as a period of unmitigated darkness—so much so that words like “feudal” are used today, even by many well-informed Catholics, as synonyms for backwardness.

Occasionally, however, a book comes along that exposes gapping holes in the prevailing narrative. That can certainly be said of Rodney Stark’s latest offering, How the West Won: The Neglected Story of the Triumph of Modernity (ISI Books). Beginning with the blunt warning, “This is a remarkably unfashionable book” (p. 1), Stark sets out to critique, and, in some instances, demolish several widespread mythologies about the West’s development.

In many cases, Stark is not presenting arguments that have not been previously stated. Max Weber’s theory about particular forms of Protestantism and capitalism has, for instance, been thoroughly discredited. Likewise the studies of the English historian Jonathan Riley-Smith have illustrated that the Crusades are severely miscast as an exercise in profit-seeking by poor illiterate barons and that these events need to be understood against a background of a militarily-expansionist Islam.

What makes Stark’s book different from these and other studies are two things.

  • First, he weaves his arguments about pre-Christian Europe, the medieval period, the Crusades, and the development of capitalism (to name just a few) into an account which dissolves many prevailing conceptual divisions between the pre-modern and modern worlds. Many secular-minded people—but also many Christians—will be surprised at the high degree of continuity, for instance, between minds like Saint Albertus Magnus and Sir Isaac Newton. Sometimes this occurs by Stark pointing to evidence that has hitherto escaped most people’s attention. In other instances, it is a question of looking at the same evidence but through a more plausible interpretative lens.
  • The second distinctive feature of How the West Won is how Stark shows how particular historical myths have less to do with the facts than with efforts to paint Christianity as a backward regressive cultural force. To give just one example, Islamic Spain is regularly portrayed, Stark notes, as an oasis of tolerance compared to a repressive Christendom, despite the undeniable evidence of the widespread and long-term persecution and subjugation of Jews and Christians by the Moors.

In making these points, Stark is happy to engage in the deeply politically-incorrect exercise of comparing developments in the West to that of other civilizations. His analysis suggests that if a culture does not embody a robust conception of reason and free will—not to mention a conception of God to whom these characteristics are also attributed—then it’s road to freedom, economic prosperity, and human flourishing is going to be very difficult indeed. Espousing such views won’t win you tenure in the contemporary academy. That, however, doesn’t weaken the saliency of such perspectives.

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The constitutions or laws of many nations provide for what is called “religious liberty.” In practice, this liberty is under severe restrictions in numerous countries, if it exists at all.


Obama’s “Right to Worship” 
Ushers in New State Religion



The constitutions or laws of many nations provide for what is called “religious liberty.” In practice, this liberty is under severe restrictions in numerous countries, if it exists at all. 

The fact is that no one can really talk about religious freedom without examining what the “religion” holds. Grace builds on nature but does not contradict it. No religion, without further discussion, can simply believe anything at all. Some minimum criterion of order and right is presupposed to this freedom to follow religion’s teachings or one’s conscience. Concern about “fanaticism” is legitimate, even when such fanaticism is rooted in some religion’s basic explanation of itself. Yet not everything religion holds is ipso facto “fanatic,” despite what many state ideologues want to maintain.

Much of the controversy today is not precisely about religious freedom but is instead over matters of fact and truth. Abortion, homosexuality, genetic experimentation, and euthanasia are not primarily “religious” issues but rational ones. On these life issues, not a few religions have come to embrace what are, in effect, irrational “rights” that contradict reason. Therefore, “religious freedom” is really, at bottom, a philosophical and political issue because it pertains to what a reasonable politics can rightly allow.

Though religious freedom, in its American form, was almost unique in the world when it was first established at the nation’s founding, this liberty had been almost taken for granted in this country until recently. Now its erosion is suddenly well-advanced. Its very meaning is in doubt. The belated realization of this change in understanding of religious liberty has alerted some few, perhaps too few, to the seriousness of the issue. Indeed, the change extends beyond American borders since our government often seeks to require its new understanding of religious liberty on others as a requirement of any aid or help.

Religious liberty is still, however, the reason why many believers leave their country of origin in search of another where their beliefs are welcome. This emigration today is especially from Muslim countries, where “religious liberty” means, basically, that everyone should be Muslim, or if not, agree to second-class citizenship. Any valid theory of religious liberty would allow major religions to hold that its position is true, provided it was not imposed by force or coerced in some other way.

Every January 16 since 1996, the American president has issued a proclamation setting aside that day as Religious Freedom Day. The U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom keeps extensive files on religious freedom in most countries. While most declarations retain the phrase “religious freedom,” it has been noted that around 2010, the phrase, “freedom of worship,” rather than “freedom of religion” sometimes appeared. If we understand “freedom of religion” to mean “freedom of worship,” does it make any difference? Small errors in the beginning lead to huge errors in the end, as Aristotle long ago remarked. Freedom of worship, at least in idea, seems to be designed to distinguish or separate religious freedom from freedom to worship. Even when the term “freedom of religion” is used, many of the actions of the current U.S. government, such as those forcing religious believers to support government programs contrary to their faith, indicate that “freedom of worship” is meant.

The distinction thus conveniently backs up the Obama administration’s moves to place all health, education, and charitable organizations under the umbrella of state control. Consequently, I am “free” to believe or say what I want within the walls of a church or place of worship. This view implicitly takes all religious people out of the public realm if their religious or philosophical view is contrary to that of the state. This position is the modern version of the political views developed by Marsilius of Padua and Thomas Hobbes. Religion must be solely internal with no public effects. The state controls all external actions. This exercise of control is what the change in wording was designed to accomplish.

How does the president understand “religious liberty”? In his 2013 Proclamation for Religious Freedom Day, he wrote: “Foremost among the rights Americans hold sacred is the freedom to worship as we choose.” He then refers to the history of this right. “Because of this protection by our Constitution, each of us has the right to practice out faith openly and as we choose.” In the 2014 Proclamation, the phrase “freedom of worship” does not occur, only “religious freedom.” The source of this freedom is explained in this manner:


Today America embraces people of all faiths and of no faith. We are Christians and Jews Muslims and Hindus, Buddhists and Sikhs, atheists and agnostics. Our religious diversity enriches our cultural fabric and reminds us that what bind us as one are not the tenets of our faiths, the colors of our skins, or the origins of our names. What binds us Americans is our adherence to shared ideals—freedom, equality, justice, and our right as a people to set our own course.

It is this understanding of religious freedom that the country wants to promote at home and abroad.

Religious freedom thus really has nothing to do with God. It has to do with “ideals.” Just where these ideals come from or why they are binding is not clear. Evidently, unlike in the real world, these ideals do not conflict with one another, nor do members of religions or no religions. Each religion and philosophy is presumed to have purged itself of anything important enough to cause a conflict. Since religious conflict is seen to be a major cause of war and disorder, the state will not allow any differences to be manifest outside the place of worship.

The real public “religion” becomes the religion of state that decrees this happy world in which everyone gets along. These principles are valid for all men, not just America. The “tenets” of faith, our race, and national origin mean little. On this theological or philosophical basis, the state allows us to believe or practice what we want. It is the state alone that controls the public order. It does not care about any ideas or religions so long as they never question the principles that motivate the state itself.

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