Friday, August 06, 2010

More on Hiroshima

One of the strangest things about conservative talk radio, to me, is how utilitarian they can be. For instance, I was listening to Michael Medved today. He was a guest on a local Chicago talk show. They were talking about Hiroshima. Medved and Big John Cody, the host of the show, bought into the argument that the killing of innocents was justified because of the proportionate good that was achieved. "Many more lives were saved." As Tollefson's essay that I linked to in my previous post said, this is the same kind of reasoning people use to justify abortion.

I know a Catholic moral theologian who do not believe there are any absolute moral norms. I heard him say so in a public gathering. I really, really don't get this, especially after Ven. John Paul II taught in Veritatis splendor that consequentialism and proportionalism are not acceptable Catholic modes of moral reasoning.

Although I know that many people abuse the idea of a consistent life ethic to justify not doing anything about abortion, there is a real sense in which there has to be a consistent life ethic. If a principle holds in abortion, it also holds in act of war: It is always wrong to intentionally take innocent human life, no matter what good is achieved by doing so.

University Faculty for Life weblog

The UFL now has a weblog.

Sample post:

“The Abiding Significance of Hiroshima and Nagasaki”

Christopher Tollefsen’s essay with that title was posted on The Public Discourse blog earlier today. http://www.thepublicdiscourse.com/2010/08/1485 Only a small portion of the essay deals with abortion but the essay is well worth reading for its timely reflections on the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Richard M.

Thursday, August 05, 2010

A pretty good argument for the divinity of the Holy Spirit

"Of the Holy Ghost it is also said, 'Know you not that your members are the temple of the Holy Ghost?' (1 Cor. 6:9). Now, to have a temple is God's prerogative."

Wednesday, August 04, 2010

The Michael Farm

William Michael, the head guy at the Classical Liberal Arts Academy, has a farm in North Caroline. He keeps a blog in which he describes what he is doing on the farm.

I have been gardening ever since I was in junior high, when I started subscribing to Organic Gardening and bought Mother Earth News Almanac. I always wanted a farm like this. That is why I subscribed to and occasionally wrote for Caelum et Terra when it was being published. I know others who have done much better at getting back to the land. We still have a hobby garden which produces a little of our food, but I don't work in our yard nearly enough to even bring it to its potential.

It is illegal for us to have chickens in our neighborhood.