|
|
 |
 |
|
--- Thursday, May 25, 2006
Pouncing on the Protectors
The Washington Post launches an assault against the Marriage Protection Amendment and the Senators who are trying to bring it up for a vote next month.
On the merits, there is simply no case for an amendment that would write into the Constitution an express command to every state and federal official to discriminate against a class of people. Marriage has always been a state matter in the American system, and nothing about the advent of gay marriage in a single state should change that. Opponents of same-sex marriage outside of Massachusetts have no cause for complaint. What goes on in that state doesn't concern them, and they have shown themselves perfectly capable of organizing in many other states to nip marriage rights for same-sex couples in the bud. What's more, federal law already guarantees that no state need recognize same-sex marriages performed in any other. So the only purpose of a federal amendment would be to prevent states that wish to move toward marriage equality from doing so. Even within Massachusetts, where opposition to same-sex marriage is hardly overwhelming, the experiment with it will not succeed if a majority of citizens over time believe strongly that the decision by the state's high court creating marriage equality should be overturned.
What exactly is the problem that requires upsetting 200 years of constitutional norms? The question answers itself. The problem, of course, is that hundreds of years of legal norms and thousands of years of societal norms are being upset in the West, for no clear reason other than to avoid "discrimination." Yet the law at its root knows only discrimination, between accepted and rejected, permitted and criminal, moral and immoral.
The marriage amendment may be a pre-emptive strike against an emerging cultural shift, but it's hardly unjustified. To suggest that homosexual marriage will remain content within the Massachusetts borders, or that existing federal statutes will protect tradition from the whims of the judiciary, is to willfully ignore American politics of the past several decades. Leave it to the states? Not only does the concept of marriage (at least in its fundamental definition) require a national consensus to remain stable, but as recent news in Georgia has shown, even statewide ballot measures are not immune from judicial override.
What is appalling is not the fact that the Constitution may be altered to contain a definition for marriage, but that such an addition has become essential to protecting the basic understanding of family.
--- Wednesday, May 24, 2006
North American Values Go South
The New York Times applauds a decision in Colombia to enshrine a "right to choose" in its laws.
Along with El Salvador and Chile, Colombia had been one of three countries in Latin America where abortion was completely prohibited. The decision is very important for Colombian women, who will no longer have to contend with a legal system that privileges a fetus's life over that of the mother. It also adds to a string of legal rulings relaxing abortion rules in Latin America, and will encourage abortion-rights advocates elsewhere.
Almost as important as the ruling itself, however, are the reasons behind it. In the United States, the right to abortion rests on a woman's right to privacy. The Colombian court, in contrast, based its ruling on a woman's right to health, life and equality....Colombia must now overcome local pressure from the church and ensure that abortion is truly available to poor women in public hospitals. It should also address the lack of sex education and high rates of rape that have made abortion so tragically common. It appears that Colombia already had a culture of abortion, with or without its equivalent of Roe v Wade, that was destroying a fourth of the nation's babies, according to the Times editorial. Yet under our postmodern value system, the tragedy in this is not the loss of unborn children but rather the inadequate conditions under which women obtain abortions. Illegal abortion is not, as the Times claims, a "huge public health problem" -- but abortion, in general, is an abhorrent moral and cultural problem. Certainly, there are many other disturbing trends that inevitably parallel widespread abortion, namely rape and promiscuity. The answer is not to make destroying an unborn baby easier.
--- Tuesday, May 23, 2006
Da Vinci Code - Hoax or Help?
Mark Tooley in the The American Spectator points out that the National Council of Churches is standing (somewhat) against the doctrine of The Da Vinci Code, but not as much because of its misrepresentation of Christ's divine nature.
Roman Catholics and Evangelicals have challenged The Da Vinci Code for proposing that Christianity is a hoax perpetrated on the world for nearly 2000 years. The liberal National Council of Churches (NCC) is also concerned about the new movie, because it overlooks Jesus' supposed endorsement of its left-leaning political themes.
"Real-life scenarios are present daily that contradict the Gospel of Jesus Christ," the NCC announced in a special Da Vinci news release. "Too often it is those issues that have far-reaching affects on people's lives, and their faith, but they go without any word of protest or rebuttal -- issues like war, poverty, racial and economic injustice, the devastation experienced after hurricanes and tsunamis and the negative impact of global climate change, to name a few." And indeed, the NCC does seem more concerned with the message of the book in its supposed implications toward the physical world than in its complete distortion of Christ's ministry of salvation. As Tooley notes, however, one doesn't find a great distance between the Da Vinci Code's earth-bound presentation of Christ and the NCC's emphasis on temporal concerns. A site connected with the NCC actually presents the idea that Da Vinci is beneficial in its treatment of women.
Yet even if Da Vinci were truly honoring and fair to the feminine nature (and I don't see how it could be), that doesn't change the fact that its entire premise is based upon a most aggregious lie about the person and purpose of Christ. No one -- man or woman -- can really be aided by such deception. And why should we appeal to a work of fiction, blasphemous fiction at that, in order to find Jesus' attitude toward women?
Fundamentally, though, the danger of Da Vinci does not come from its depiction of Christ's humanity, but in its deconstruction of His divinity. Mary Magdalene is used merely as a means toward that end, which is to expose as a lie all that Christ claimed to be, and all that He came to do. This is not a historical issue, since history offers no credibility to Da Vinci's purported secrets. Rather, the conflict is spiritual, with no real room to be impressed by this "great teacher" unless He was the divine ruler that He purported to be. And that claim seems to me far more credible and far more impressive than any "conspiracy" a novelist could cook up.
--- Friday, May 19, 2006
Groups urge for mandatory STD Immunizations
A news headline that contains the words "Cervical cancer vaccine" would help any woman rest more at ease for her health...or, would it?
It is true that cervical cancer will probably kill almost 4,000 women this year. However, in some news stories, you have to read between the lines to see the other part of the truth in this deadly disease.
The American Cancer Society website states, "Cervix cancer is caused by a virus called HPV." HPV, human papillomavirus, is a sexually transmitted disease. Put two and two together, and you will find that the cancer that kills thousands of women each year could virtually be eradicated if men and women abstained from sexual contact outside of a marital relationship. If sex stayed where it belongs, this cancer would eventually die out.
Unlike other deadly cancers, this one can be prevented, and it does not take a vaccine to do so. The headline of this article should read, "Vaccine developed to help prevent most common sexually transmitted disease," but that probably wouldn't have the same affect as news of a cancer vaccine.
So, most people would ask why anyone not having sex should care about this. Those of us who are choosing to abstain until marriage will not have to worry about the vaccine or contracting the disease, so who cares? You should care. Reading further in the news story, you will find the following:
Pending action by the FDA, the national Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices will decide in June whether to endorse routine vaccination with the vaccine.
The committee's HPV vaccine workgroup is recommending the vaccine be given to girls 11 and 12, and the committee will consider recommendations for females 13 to 26.
You should care, because once the vaccine is approved by the FDA, it will most likely only be a matter of time before it will be mandated for every girl in elementary school to be immunized for this disease. Along with her shot for measles, mumps and rubella, your daughter or granddaughter may also be required to receive drugs to prevent a sexually transmitted disease with the assumption that she will have sex and there is nothing you can do about it.
--- Wednesday, May 17, 2006
The Da Vinci Overload
If it were not for the deluge of media coverage and commentary, I would probably just as soon ignore the emergence of the Da Vinci Code movie that opens on Friday. I haven't bothered to read the book, and the trailer for the film left me barely even curious to see it.
On the other hand, the world does not appear ready to let "The Code" drift into the sunset. And whenever spiritual matters find their way to the fore of pop culture, we can't really afford to let mass media direct the conversation. As Amy Welborn notes in USA TODAY, Da Vinci's arrival has been met with affirmation that maybe Jesus really didn't match the Christian understanding, but regardless, it's just a story, so only reactionary believers will be upset about it.
The book is bothersome because it not only doesn't tell the truth about Jesus, it also doesn't tell the truth about what Christians say about Jesus. As a writer of many books on Roman Catholic issues with a widely read blog, I've been getting e-mails and fielding questions for three years, and a surprising number of my correspondents express, well ... faith that the story the novel tells about Jesus is historically accurate.
This new "history" says that Jesus and Mary Magdalene were married, that Jesus didn't preach the Kingdom of God or repentance from sin or carrying one's cross, but rather he preached the Good News about the unity of the masculine and feminine principles of reality. And impregnated Mary Magdalene — who is the real Holy Grail. Because she carries the "blood" of Jesus within her. Which Leonardo da Vinci worked into his art.
Crazy stuff. But when I get e-mails from people who are either disturbed by what they read in The Da Vinci Code or are enraged at me for mocking it — calling me a "typically brainwashed Catholic," as if there could be any other kind — I know that something's up....So, will the secular news media get busy on this? Judging from the coverage of the novel's impact, as well as the recent coverage that greeted National Geographic's The Gospel of Judas, I'm not optimistic. Strangely enough, one can scarcely find an actual, serious defense of the "history" outlined in The Da Vinci Code, which perhaps exposes the real reasons that such blasphemous ideas are given the cultural mainstage. While the "facts" presented in the book and movie may not be credible, it doesn't surprise me that the idea of a great Christian conspiracy would gain such a following in the present age. Rest assured, the claims of The Code do not just blur some of the less significant tenets of Christian belief -- but the very foundations upon which faith is built.
Yet is this different than any other "new" concept of Christ presented by liberal theology, false teaching, or most other religions? To strip Jesus of His deity or His resurrection is not simply to alter a few details; rather, it mandates a new interpretation of every word spoken by Him, the mission for which He came, and, subsequently, every page in the Scripture.
So is the Da Vinci Code a threat to Christian doctrine? No more so than a thousand other heresies that attempt to create a new identity for Christ. But perhaps its popularity will, if nothing else, provide an opportunity for extolling the true, bold, soul-saving purpose that brought Jesus from the immaculate throne of God to tainted realm of earth.
The West gives up on the Best
As a sex educator myself, I can never refrain myself from responding to a debate such as what Travis refers to in his "The West Can't Wait" blog.
As the article points out, the media makes it impossible to keep intimacy intimate. The precious gift mankind has been given in sexuality has been exploited, which leaves parents and communities with the task of helping children from a young age sort out the "mixed messages" before girls are even old enough to think boys are more than just gross.
The headline in the Post on the second page of the section on Europe reads "Europe: Not About Risk." No, sex is not just about risk. It's about our whole selves - body, soul and spirit. Kudos to these "scientists" for making it about condoms and "prevention." Just to quote a few great leaders in this movement:
(In response to teaching kids abstinence) "We think it's unfair. It's useless. It's inefficient. We have been advocating the use of the condom...and I think that we tend to be successful."
"The focus [in Western Europe] is much more on preventing pregnancy and less on sex itself."
Okay, so let's get the obvious out here - sex is the only thing that causes pregnancy, therefore, not focusing on sex when discussing pregnancy prevention is virtually impossible. However, this quote is more bothersome to me in that it represents the overall problem of where we go wrong in educating our kids. Sex should be portrayed as intimate and beautiful, something encompassing your whole self, and instilling in children a vision for their lives and how to have the best in relationships, marriage, family and, ultimately, sex. Instead, Western Europ and much of the world focuses on frantically trying to keep what's natural from naturally happening by taking the emphasis off of the uniqueness of our human bodies and the beauty of sex and putting it on condoms and birth control.
How do we keep kids from getting pregnant? Tell them not to have sex. How do we teach them something that seems "unfair," "useless," and "inefficient?" Teach them about the incredible beauty of sex. Teach them it's more than physical pleasure. Teach them the exciting part about sex, and instill in them an excitement about waiting for the best instead of settling for a cheap knock-off while doing their best trying to dodge the consequences of their decisions.
Joan-Carles Suris, head of the research group on adolescent medicine at the University of Lausanne, puts it another way: "The main difference is that in the States sexual activity is considered a risk. Here we consider it a pleasure."
Thank you, Mr. Suris. Perhaps the young men and women who are merely numbers to add to your statistics who are now dealing with an incurable STD, an unplanned pregnancy, post-abortion stress syndrome, or depression would disagree with you. On the other hand, those of us in the States whom you may be referring to are not part of your statistics, because we consider sex a pleasure worth sharing only with a person who cares enough to commit their whole life to another in holy matrimony. One statistic your article does not point out is that the people who claim to have the highest satisfaction in their sex lives are married people. Sexuality was created for marriage, and statistics support that from every angle. That fact will never change, so neither will our message to teens.
--- Tuesday, May 16, 2006
The West Can't Wait
The Washington Post carried a special section today that asked the question, "Is Teen Sex Bad?" The answer, unsurprisingly, seems to be: "We don't know....It just depends....Probably not." And even though the section criticizes the contradicting messages offered to teens in the United States, virtually nothing in the set of articles serves to reinforce the idea that sex is most virtuous and physically and emotionally healthy within the confines of marriage. Nor is there any real discussion to consider the possibility that sex before marriage might be a moral problem. Mixed messages, indeed.
Among the findings that surprised me: Although prevalent attitudes on teen sex differ in Western Europe and the United States, the views of leading researchers and doctors on both sides of the Atlantic do not. Their opinions lean much closer to the European model. They tend to agree that the mixed message America sends to teens about sex -- authorities say "don't" while mass media screams "What are you waiting for?"-- endanger our children. The real problem, however, isn't that kids hear competing messages of "wait" and "why not?" but rather that most every message they are given stems from a value system deprived of any firm foundation of morality. There are valiant exceptions, of course -- in parents, teachers, and organizations -- yet even the staunchest guise of an abstinence proclamation from groups like Planned Parenthood of SIECUS lacks actual conviction that kids might be doing something wrong in having sex (or having abortions later).
--- Wednesday, May 10, 2006
The First Pragmatic Church
The Washington Post has a fascinating report on a trend, at least around New York and DC, of training up children in the religious way they should go -- even if Mom and Dad don't walk in faith.
For many years, Varun Gauri rejected religious services, practiced no rituals and spurned all mainstream notions of God. But these days he's busy dipping his daughter's toes in various spiritual waters, from a religious preschool to services at a number of local churches. Gauri says he wants to offer Yasmeen the moral foundation and spiritual guidance he believes religion can provide. Perhaps above all, he wants his daughter to enjoy religion's potential for providing solace. Recently, the 5-year-old expressed a deep-felt desire: "I wish people wouldn't grow old and die," she said. Religion, Gauri hopes, "can help her find some ways of living with that kind of loss."
Like Gauri, many nonreligious parents -- whether they've eschewed belief or practice or both -- find themselves seeking the psychological, spiritual and moral blessings they hope a religious background can bestow on their offspring. This isn't a surprising idea, I suppose, considering the popular idea that "religion" is a private matter that need bear no actual resemblance to one's real life. Yet it is perhaps an egregious example, in which parents would seek to provide their kids with the temporal benefits of a life of faith without holding to any actual beliefs.
One hesitates to criticize an idea that might bring more children into an environment where they might hear the truth of Christ. And it seems likely that many, along with their parents, could be "unintentionally" accepting that message.
Mere training in a "religious" setting, though, is not going to instill a lasting change of mind and behavior unless it is accompanied by a real faith in the real God.
What Is Sin, that We Are Mindful of It?
The concept of sin, according to the theological insights of the Guardian, seems to have gone the way of black-and-white TV.
Sin is as alien to the contemporary mind as fetching water from a well, darning your own socks or finding Demis Roussos sexy. According to the Catholic Catechism, sin is "humanity's rejection of God and opposition to him", which of course means that the godless (a bracket into which a large number of generation Y will fall) find the whole notion irrelevant, senseless or both. This is precisely what Christians who accept the idea of sin find deeply disturbing: a culture that doesn't even care about sin has truly cut itself off from God's grace and is therefore sinful in the most profound sense....
The fact that yoof no longer cares about sin does not mean it is amoral. Call them empty gestures if you will, but young people today care a great deal about trade justice, making poverty history and saving the planet for future generations and cute little baby elephants. Sinners reject God, but not necessarily the good. That last sentence strikes at the real heart of the matter. Can one truly be moral or good without believing in God? Incidentally, perhaps, but only in the most shallow sense of "goodness." After all, there is nothing especially profound about wanting to eliminate poverty, protect the environment, or save the whales (or elephants). Whatever the merits of those causes, they require nothing from the soul and thus, essentially, no real moral judgment.
Certainly, however, our innate sense of fair and right reflects the natural law instilled by God. Yet it is a dangerous assumption to think that young Britons, or young Americans, will continue to grasp good and evil if they lose any bearings of what is "sin." In this age at least, the idea has become somewhat vague -- perhaps in our unwillingness to pronounce anything wrong, save for the sins of "intolerance" or "injustice."
Real sin, though, is serious business, and ignoring it deprives an individual of any solid foundation upon which to base moral decisions. It is not so much that a set of rules and laws are being broken as that hearts are growing numb to the idea that they could be judged on a standard outside of themselves. In the most important sense, this results in a chasm between knowing a God who detests unrighteousness to an inconceivable degree. In His abundant mercy, He provided a means for placing the guilt of all of our wrongs and failures on Jesus Christ at His death. Obviously, diluting the concept of sin makes it more difficult to see the salvation that all need and of which none are deserving.
--- Tuesday, May 09, 2006
A Terrorist Lives On - Mercy or Madness?
Cal Thomas says that Zacarias Moussaoui might have had a point when he proclaimed America's defeat following his sentence to life in prison.
"America you lost. I won!" shouted Zacarias Moussaoui after an Alexandria, Va., jury rejected the death penalty for his admitted role in the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attack that killed nearly 3,000 people.
Some may interpret that remark as self-vindication, but what if it has another meaning? Could he have meant that the United States has lost its sense of justice and that the verdict was an example of the moral squishiness that Islamofascists believe characterizes so much of this country?
If that is what he meant, he has ample evidence to believe it based on forms filled out by the jurors, which included "mitigating factors" that led them to reject the death penalty in favor of life in prison without the possibility of parole. Nine of the 12 jurors said that Moussaoui's "unstable early childhood and dysfunctional family" resulted in his having a home life without structure and emotional and financial support and his hostile relationship with his mother eventually led to him being placed in an orphanage. Thomas may be on to something here, though I suspect Moussaoui's real message was: "America, you don't have the guts to kill me!" And this is likely the same message understood by our terrorist enemies around the world. Whether or not Moussaoui's life was spared as an act of mercy, his allies will view it as an act of weakness.
Moussaoui was never going to be a martyr for his cause. His death at the hand of an extensive and fair legal process -- in which he admitted his own criminal activity -- could not be seen as evidence of a wicked America except by the most warped of terrorist minds. And let us not think that letting the man dwell in a prison until his demise represents justice, a fair penalty for his evil actions and intentions. Mercy, perhaps, but by no means justice.
Cal Thomas, of course, seems convinced that mercy was not the motivating factor either, but rather an unwillingness to pronounce Moussaoui's deeds as the ultimate wrongs against the state. If that is the case, then one finds it difficult to feel anything but embarrassment at this appeasement.
There is a place for mercy, no question, in the application of the law, and it is certainly required in personal relationships. And the sentence of death must be meted out with the utmost seriousness and caution. But to eliminate the use of all fatal punishment would seem to abandon the ability to truly mark the most heinous acts in society for the evil they are. In such cases, taking the guilty life offers is the only way to deliver sufficient justice.
On the other hand, followers of Christ know that forgiveness is granted to even the most vile members of humanity who repent and submit to the salvation of the Lord. The balance between justice and mercy is thus not always so easy to define. But in the case of those like Zacarias Moussaoui, I find it difficult to be content with giving an unremorseful man life, when he deserves death by the laws of God and man.
But though I seek the justice of our law against this enemy of the state, we must be humbly grateful that God is willing to deny justice for those who are in Christ. We were all abhorrent souls before the King of Heaven's wrath was satisfied in the Cross of His Son. Yet trusting in that sacrifice, we are offered the abundance of God's mercy rather than the crushing of His justice. Our death penalty has already been carried out by the Holy One, thus we are given life.
Dear George...
Surprisingly enough, the government of Iran does not grant its approval to its American counterparts, particularly on the issue of nuclear capacity.
Iran's president declared in a letter to President Bush that democracy had failed worldwide and lamented "an ever-increasing global hatred" of the U.S. government. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice swiftly rejected the letter, saying it didn't resolve questions about Tehran's suspect nuclear program....
The letter from President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad made only an oblique reference to Iran's nuclear intentions, asking why "any technological and scientific achievement reached in the Middle East region is translated into and portrayed as a threat to the Zionist regime."
Otherwise, it lambasted Bush for his handling of the Sept. 11 attacks, accused the media of spreading lies about the Iraq war and railed against the United States for its support of Israel. It questioned whether the world would be a different place if the money spent on Iraq had been spent to fight poverty. The Irani leader additionally seemed to lobby for a job in the U.S. leadership -- as a chaplain.
A rambling letter to U.S. President George Bush from Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad suggested Bush return to Christian teachings.
Any hopes Ahmadinejad would offer a solution to the nuclear enrichment impasse Iran has with the United Nations were dashed in the letter, the first direct correspondence with Washington since 1979.
"Can one be a follower of Jesus Christ, the great Messenger of God ... But at the same time, have countries attacked: the lives, reputations and possessions of people destroyed," the 18-page letter said. Yet I would have to suspect that if the United States won't be taking legislative advice from Iran, we probably won't accept their theological counsel either. What is apparent, however, is that such a correspondence is meant to gather the media circulation it has been granted, as an attempt to undermine the credibility of the Bush administration -- at home and around the world -- and to divert the gaze of those wary of Iran's nuclear ambition. Yet this is basically the same approach used of late by Osama bin Laden and his minions. Let us not be deceived.
|
|
|
 |
|
|
|
|
|
