tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27612445.post883254355646398203..comments2024-03-23T12:05:23.537-05:00Comments on The Wild Reed: The Challenge of PeaceMichael J. Baylyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03087458490602152648noreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27612445.post-27161192148455002422008-08-07T12:56:00.000-05:002008-08-07T12:56:00.000-05:00I think there has been great progress in places yo...I think there has been great progress in places you might expect it. <BR/><BR/>For many years at St Blog's, August 6-9 was the occasion of huge combox flame wars in many of the prominent blogs (such as Amy Welborn's and Mark Shea's, to cite just 2 of the most prominent).<BR/><BR/>What is interesting to me is how over time, more and more conservative American Catholics felt comfortable in strongly questioning the use of nuclear weapons in WW2 in objective (if not subjective) terms. <BR/><BR/>This shift was important, because it laid the groundwork for what happened in the past 3+ years on the issue of torture under American auspices. <BR/><BR/>There has been an enormous cleavage among conservative American Catholics between those who might be called Catholic Americans - who embrace openly or covertly a consequentialist approach to national security - and American Catholics who struggle to resist that. Mark Shea has in particularly led some of the most pioneering stuff happening at St Blog's in the past decade (progressive Catholics who image we've led this are sorta kidding ourselves - no one harvests the crop they themselves sow).<BR/><BR/>Consequentialism is deadly. Not only in warfare but in other moral areas, some of which are areas where progressives appear quite tempted to be consequentialist too. <BR/><BR/>All manner of people who tend to be marginalized - the gay and lesbian, the black, the disabled, the unborn, those in the shadows of life - are canaries in the mineshaft of consequentialism, because in a consequentialist world we are not valued very much. (Personally, *that's* where I think issues of sexual orientation take on a moral gravity that is actually much more in synch with the deepest levels of Catholic moral theology than many people on the right or left appear to understand. To put it bluntly, whereas in a secular consequentialist world, gay "rights" flow from the same privacy "rights" that enshrine a right to kill unborn human beings, in a Catholic moral world the inherent dignity of each human being regardless of value or worth to anyone else is the source of the inherent dignity of gay and unborn human beings that is not to be devalued by anyone else.)Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27612445.post-26177387049587271512008-08-07T09:02:00.000-05:002008-08-07T09:02:00.000-05:00What was most impressive about the Bishops' Pastor...What was most impressive about the Bishops' Pastoral on War and Peace was not so much its conclusions, but on its processes. It was truly and admirably dialogical. Neocons and pacifists, army generals and peace activists were consulted. Was this done with the recent pastoral on gays? Nope. Shows how far we have fallen as a Church.kevin57https://www.blogger.com/profile/01681985465980196347noreply@blogger.com