More Petulant Bullying Confusion from Bunting *

Apr 5th, 2010 | Filed by

New atheists, shoddiness, sheer philosophical illiteracy, sheer aggressive intolerance, violent.… Read the rest



Individual Rights and Collective Responsibility

Apr 5th, 2010 | By Joshua F. Leach

The standard collectivist critique of individual rights has been with us a long time. It was best formulated in its classic outlines by the Catholic Church during the nineteenth century, amidst a great many cries for social and political change. The line the Church took at the time was essentially to say that rights cannot be understood without respect to “duties,” and that suffering and self-sacrifice are great virtues against which the individual should not be protected. As the classic statement on Catholic social teaching, the Rerum Novarum (1891), puts it, “The… pains and hardships of life will have no end or cessation on earth; for the consequences of sin are bitter and hard to bear, and they must accompany … Read the rest



Letters for April, 2010

Apr 5th, 2010 | By

Letters for April, 2010.… Read the rest



Bunting pulls out the ‘new atheist’ file yet again

Apr 5th, 2010 11:34 am | By

Another consignment of rebarbative truculent inaccurate wool from Madeleine Bunting. About…? The Vatican’s petulant cries of ‘petty gossip’ in response to revelations of its settled habit of concealing and protecting child rape? No. The ‘new’ atheists – that’s what’s got her worked up: the endless unappeasable horror of the ‘new’ atheists. Their wrongness. Their violence. Their ignorance. Their deafness to the overwhelming arguments of Karen Armstrong and Terry Eagleton.

…in the years since the publication of Richard Dawkins’s The God Delusion in 2006 and Christopher Hitchens’s God Is Not Great in 2007, there has been an addition every few weeks from enraged philosophers, theologians, historians and journalists, all trying to convince readers of the shoddiness of the New Atheists.

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The Mafia doesn’t give Easter sermons

Apr 4th, 2010 6:01 pm | By

Sholto Byrnes, perhaps somewhat surprisingly, doesn’t entirely buy Peter Hitchens’s line on atheism.

For while Stalin’s atheism may have been a necessary condition for the atrocities he committed — I completely agree with Hitchens that “without God, many more things are possible than are permitted in a Godly order” — it is not a sufficient one. I part company with him when he claims that his preceding sentence proves that which follows it: “Atheism is a licence for ruthlessness, and appeals to the ruthless.”

Good about parting company, but I part company earlier than that. Atheism is neither a sufficient nor a necessary condition for committing atrocities, and it isn’t necessarily the case that ‘without God, many more things … Read the rest



Anxiety After Terreblanche Murder *

Apr 4th, 2010 | Filed by

Afrikaner farmers have objected in court to ANC leader singing the old struggle song ‘Kill the Boer’ in public.… Read the rest



Vatican Still Complaining of ‘Petty Gossip’ *

Apr 4th, 2010 | Filed by

‘Holy Father, the people of God are with you and will not let themselves be influenced by the petty gossip of the moment.’… Read the rest



Saudi Arabia: Lebanese ‘Sorcerer’ Gets Stay *

Apr 4th, 2010 | Filed by

Not this Friday, but perhaps next Friday. Horoscopes are ‘condemned as un-Islamic’; off with his head.… Read the rest



Demonizing Atheism is a Bad Way to Defend Faith *

Apr 4th, 2010 | Filed by

‘People who are given to ruthlessness can always find a justification for it,’ notes Sholto Byrnes.… Read the rest



New Scientist Talks to Francisco Ayala *

Apr 4th, 2010 | Filed by

Religion and science ‘deal with different ways of knowing.’… Read the rest



What kind of interface?

Apr 3rd, 2010 4:25 pm | By

Michael Ruse says why the Templeton Foundation is a good thing.

More recently, the award has been given to academics working on the science-religion interface. It was therefore appropriate that this year the Prize went to Francisco Ayala, a Spanish-born population geneticist at the University of California at Irvine. Ayala (a former Catholic priest) has long been interested in the science-religion relationship…

The science-religion interface? What’s that? That’s the kind of thing that Templeton always talks about, but what exactly is it? And what does Michael Ruse think it is?

It could just mean, or be intended to mean, scientists and religious believers talking. That would certainly be unexceptionable. The trouble is, that doesn’t really seem like a very plausible … Read the rest



NY Times on Vatican’s Rebuke of NY Times *

Apr 3rd, 2010 | Filed by

Cardinal Levada singled out several Times reporters and columnists for criticism.… Read the rest



Vatican Official Rebukes New York Times *

Apr 3rd, 2010 | Filed by

Detailed fury at reporting, zero worry about victims.… Read the rest



Exiled Murphy May Have Continued Abuse *

Apr 3rd, 2010 | Filed by

He interacted freely with children for the rest of his life, never having been punished by church or secular law.… Read the rest



Vatican Quickly Distanced Itself From Remarks *

Apr 3rd, 2010 | Filed by

Yet the official Vatican newspaper published the remarks in its Saturday edition.… Read the rest



Angry Reaction to Cantalamessa’s Remarks *

Apr 3rd, 2010 | Filed by

Vatican is saying ‘nothing to do with us’ but the sermon probably circulated for comment at a senior level.… Read the rest



Atheists Reject Clerical Attack on Non-belief *

Apr 3rd, 2010 | Filed by

Sydney Anglican Archbishop Peter Jensen on Friday described non-belief as an ‘assault on God.’… Read the rest



Some Speech Deserves to Be Marginalized *

Apr 3rd, 2010 | Filed by

The political freedom to speak your mind does not entail a right to be taken seriously or given deference.… Read the rest



Cardinal attends to what really matters

Apr 3rd, 2010 11:34 am | By

Ratzinger gave his old job to an American when he (Ratz) was bumped upstairs. Cardinal William Levada now heads Ratzinger’s old Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. This week he expressed his sorrow and sympathy for what the church has enabled priests to do to generations of children by…writing a long article saying how awful the New York Times is.

He starts by singling out Laurie Goodstein.

Only after eight paragraphs of purple prose does Goodstein reveal that Fr. Murphy, who criminally abused as many as 200 deaf children while working at a school in the Milwaukee Archdiocese from 1950 to 1974, “not only was never tried or disciplined by the church’s own justice system, but also got

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Shed a tear for the sufferings of the Vatican

Apr 2nd, 2010 5:30 pm | By

Un.Be.Lievable. They still don’t get it. They still think they are the victims. Still! Half the world has explained it to them with one voice, and they still don’t get it!

The Pope’s preacher today likened recent attacks on the pontiff over the Catholic sex abuse scandal to the “most shameful acts of anti-Semitism”.

Not ‘attacks by priests on children’ but ‘attacks’ meaning criticism by victims and observers on the pope who helped conceal and perpetuate those very attacks by priests on children – that’s what they’re comparing to anti-Semitism! It’s – it’s – it exhausts my capacity to revile it. The self-pity, the world-blotting egocentrism, the blank inability to grasp the misery of people outside their own circle, the … Read the rest