+A.M.D.G.+
Murder, war… and justice
27 January 2007 at 20.19
The Lateran Council of 1139 banned the use of the crossbow in tournaments on the grounds that it was unsporting, since it killed at a long distance. Boxing has been an avocation of mine, and my African gym instructor, being a sporting gentleman, does not take advantage of my inferiority to his skills. He is too reluctant to punch me, and it is only when I jab him that he responds.
War is not a sport and it brings out the worst in people. It also brings out the best, and the finest gentlemen I know are among my soldier friends. Among our parishioners are young men now engaged in war and the delicacy of their conscience is unsurpassed. In my experience, mothers about to give birth and soldiers going into battle are most ardent in their desire for a priestly blessing.
In wartime, shoddy moralizing can be as fatal as death itself. Catholicism does not appoint sentimentality a vicar for reason. A prominent cleric in Rome, surely for the best of intentions, in reference to the execution of Saddam Hussein, stumbled over himself in mistakenly describing the Churchâ??s teaching on capital punishment as always an act of revenge and ‘a crime.’ But our present Pope wrote in a memorandum for the U.S. bishops in 2004:
Not all moral issues have the same moral weight as abortion and euthanasia. For example, if a Catholic were to be at odds with the Holy Father on the application of capital punishment or on the decision to wage war, he would not for that reason be considered unworthy to present himself to receive Holy Communion. While the Church exhorts civil authorities to seek peace, not war, and to exercise discretion and mercy in imposing punishment on criminals, it may still be permissible to take up arms to repel an aggressor or to have recourse to capital punishment. There may be a legitimate diversity of opinion even among Catholics about waging war and applying the death penalty, but not however with regard to abortion and euthanasia.
The leader of the Iranian people has said that Israel should be “wiped off the map.” This is no more hyperbolic than the animadversions in Mein Kampf were theatrics. Mr. Ahmadinejad wants more than a crossbow to enforce his strategy and only the most naïve would believe that his uranium enrichment program is to provide better lighting for Iranian households.
When J. Robert Oppenheimer, who had worked on the Manhattan Project, watched the atomic test in Alamogordo, New Mexico, on July 14, 1945, he muttered a line from the Hindu scripture, the Bhagavad-Gita: “I am become death, shatterer of worlds.” Leaders entrusted with devastating power need our prayers. Not all killing is a crime or base revenge, and those who are not moved by reason must be held accountable to justice.
Faith & reason, in the modern era
27 January 2007 at 20.01From the address of His Holiness Benedict XVI to the Roman Curia, December 22, 2006:
On the occasion of my meeting with the philosopher Jürgen Habermas a few years ago in Munich, he [Harbemas] said that we would need thinkers who could translate the encoded convictions of the Christian faith into the language of the secularized world to make them newly effective. In fact, the world’s urgent need of the dialogue between faith and reason is becoming more obvious.Immanual Kant, in his day, saw the essence of illuminism expressed in the so-called ’sapere aude’: in the courage of thought that does not allow itself to be embarrassed by any prejudice.
Well, since then, the cognitive capacity of the human being, his dominion over matter by the power of thought, has made progress that would have been inconceivable at the time.
However, the power of the human being holds in his hands, which science has increased, is increasingly becoming a danger that threatens the human being himself and the world. Reason oriented totally to taking the world in hand, no longer accepts limits. It is already on the point of dealing with the person merely as matter of its own production and power.
Our knowledge is growing, but at the same time, a progressive blinding of reason with regard to its own foundations and the criteria that give it direction and meaning is being recorded.
Faith in that God, who is in person the creative Reason of the universe, must be accepted by science in a new way as a challenge and a chance. Reciprocally, this faith must recognize anew its intrinsic immensity and its own reasonableness. Reason needs the Logos which was at the beginning and is our light. Faith, for its part, needs the conversation with modern reason to take stock of its own greatness and to correspond to its own responsibilities. And this is what I sought to highlight in my lesson at Regensburg. It is a matter which is certainly not solely academic: it addresses the future of us all.
In Regensburg, the dialogue between the religions was only marginally touched on and in twofold perspective. Secularized reason is unable to enter into a true dialogue with the religions. It remains closed to the question of God, and this will end by leading to the clash of cultures.
Don’t download this song
21 January 2007 at 15.37
If the RIAA lawsuits — such as against a 12-yr. old girl for having illegally ripped mp3s on her computer — don’t scare you, then perhaps you’ll be convinced by Weird Al’s plea not to pirate music:
PS — Don’t worry, this song is not pirated. It, and others, are being distributed for free by ArtistDirect and Microsoft as part of their Zune promotion. It’s also available on the ArtistDirect page.
The weight of a prayer
19 January 2007 at 17.04From an e-mail-circulated story, possibly apochryphal, but nonetheless inspirational:
Louise Redden, a poorly dressed lady with a look of defeat on her face, walked into a grocery store. She approached the owner of the store in a most humble manner and asked if he would let her charge a few groceries. She softly explained that her husband was very ill and unable to work, they had seven children and they needed food.
John Longhouse, the grocer, scoffed at her and demanded that she leave his store at once.
In desperation, well aware of her family’s needs, she said: “Please, sir! I will bring you the money just as soon as I can.” But John told her he could not give her credit, since she did not have a charge account at his store.
Standing beside the counter was a customer who overheard the conversation between the two. The customer walked forward and told the grocer that he would stand good for whatever she needed for her family.
The grocer said in a very reluctant voice, “Do you have a grocery list?”
“Yes, sir,” Louise replied.
“Okay,” he said. “Put your grocery list on the scales. Whatever your grocery list weighs, I will give you that amount in groceries.”
Louise, hesitated a moment with a bowed head, then she reached into her purse and took out a piece of paper and scribbled something on it. She then laid the piece of paper on the scale carefully with her head still bowed.
The eyes of the grocer and the customer were wide with amazement when the scales went down and stayed down. The grocer, staring at the scales, turned slowly to the customer and said begrudgingly, “I can’t believe it!”
The customer smiled.
As the grocer started putting groceries on the other side of the scales, the scale did not balance, and he was required to put more and more groceries on them until the scales would hold no more. The grocer stood there in utter disgust. Finally, he grabbed the piece of paper from the scales and looked at it with greater amazement. It was not a grocery list, it was a prayer, which said, Dear Lord, you know my needs and I am leaving this in your hands.
The grocer gave her the groceries that he had gathered and stood in stunned silence.
Louise thanked him and left the store. The other customer handed a fifty-dollar bill to the grocer and said, “It was worth every penny of it. Only God Knows how much a prayer weighs.”
Family-safe computing
17 January 2007 at 19.06
Good news from Redmond! David George, Director of Trustworthy Computing for Windows Vista, part of Microsoft’s Family-Safe Computing Initiative, describes the concerted effort to make every aspect of the computer/online/gaming/media environment a safe one for children. He describes parental controls in Windows Vista, Xbox 360, Xbox On-Line, Windows Live/MSN, MSTV, Windows Mobile and Zune.
Read the full article here, on the Windows Vista Team Blog.
For more about Vista and online safety, see Microsoft’s parental control information page, “Improve Your Family’s Web Security in Four Steps”, how-to set up parental controls and other related documentation. WinCustomize.com also has a nice little review after taking Vista’s parental controls for a test drive.
Proposal for porn .xxx domain revived
10 January 2007 at 08.18After struggling for acceptance since 2001, and ultimately being rejected in 2006, the proposal for a net domain for pornography is now revived.
Last year’s rejection by the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) was founded upon worries over how the .xxx domain would be policed. The ICM Registry, which backs the .xxx proposal, pledges that it will handle policing of its domain — specifically, ensuring that the member (porn) sites do not send out spam, spyware or computer viruses; and protecting against child pornography.
A specific .xxx domain for pornography would help by allowing parents and employers to block the domain, en masse, from home, schools, work, libraries and other government or public arenas.
Fierce debate still exists, of course. If use of the .xxx domain remains voluntary (as is the current proposal), then having another domain does not solve anything, because all the sites that exist today in the .com/.cc arena will still be there. If transfer of pornographic sites to the .xxx domain is mandatory (i.e., they are prohibited from existing in the .com and .cc domains), then the question is how to determine which sites are affected: Many companies are obvious candidates (Playboy, or any of the numerous ‘adult’ content providers), but sites in the ‘gray zone’ (e.g., lingerie or bathing suit catalogs, or art and photography sites that include artistic nudes) might improperly be required to exist in the .xxx domain, potentially blocking access to a wider audience and to potential consumers.
The famous quote, “I don’t know how to define pornography, but I know it when I see it,” comes back to haunt us. We may know it when we see it — but the task for international lawmakers is to develop a definition that is fair and a policy that is practical and efficacious.
More at the BBC.
Fulfillment of the ‘digital decade’
8 January 2007 at 04.11Bill Gates delivers the keynote address at the 2007 CES. There are some amazing advances in the realm of digital interconnectivity: cell phones, PDAs, computers, gaming systems, the Internet and even common household appliances sync and interact seamlessly. I particularly like the last part of the video where he shows a ‘digital bedroom,’ in which the walls are digital displays that can be customized to your liking. As Gates demonstrates, a teen might like to display posters from his favorite band, or sync to his XBox360 and play games. Personally, I can envision my future library with scenes of endless dusty bookshelves (to get me in the studying mood) or breezy park scenes (for relaxing reading), etc.
Check out the streaming video for a taste of what’s to come: 500k | 200k | 100k
The Compleat Gentleman
Transformation in Christ