11 March 2010

Coffee Bowl Browsing

Losing credibility:  they have no one to blame but themselves.  Science properly done is always credible, if not always absolutely correct. 

Wards of the State riot against Nanny in Greece as French and German E.U. Super Nannies tell their Greek wards to make financially responsible decisions. 

Pledge of Allegiance is constitutional.  Go figure.  Remember the important question to ask when you hear people complain about the civil use of "God":  "OK.  You're offended.  But have you been harmed?"  We do not enjoy the right not to be offended.

How Marx got it wrong:  BXVI on the failure of socialism.

I'm 100% in favor of having women play a greater role in the decision-making of the Church.  However, no one should be deluded into thinking that More Women = Better Decisions.  American university faculties are dominated by women.  The LCWR is a women-only group.  The E.U. machine has lots of women working in prominent positions.  Liberal Protestant churches are top-heavy with women leaders.  None of these institutions can lay claim to being "more perfect" simply b/c women have a greater role in the decision-making process. IOW, women are as prone to the temptations of the Devil as men are. . .sin knows no gender bias.

God, the Heavy Stone, and a Mistaken Notion of "Almighty."

My new fav show:  Caprica.  If you want a dramatic rendition of the problems faced by philosophers of science and religion, this show is for you:  mind vs. body, real world vs. virtual world, polytheist culture vs. monotheist insurgency, theocratic inculturation, ethics of technology, nature of personhood, etc.  Good stuff.

Follow HancAquam ------------>

7 comments:

  1. I read the article about giving women a greater role in decision-making in the Church. I didn't find that it concluded women would make better decisions than men. It said they would not have been silent about the sexual abuse scandal. Maybe they are implying women don't keep secrets very well???

    Thank you for all the links.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Ruth Ann, that women wouldn't keep secrets is what a "better decision" is made up of. IOW, the strong implication of the article is that it would have been a better decision to expose the abuses and women would have made that exposure more likely.

    ReplyDelete
  3. More women who are like Our Lady maybe? She had the biggest decision ever to be given to a human, to make.

    And her answer? "Be it done unto me, according to Your Will."

    She never let that power ( she held our destiny in her hands at that moment before accepting the Angel's announcement )cause her to be anything but humble. I like that kind of female decision making. I like it a lot.

    Praying the rosary helps one, as a woman, to become close to Our Lady, and alters one's identity in a positive joyful way, without the need for 'man's' esteeming of you. If you have Our Lady's company, you have all the self affirmation you will ever need. I know this is true, because I let it go for a time, and soon missed her, and came running back to her heart.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Anonymous2:58 AM

    I think an important distinction often gets overlooked when the topic of gender equality in the Church arises. Gender equality is necessary for the Church, but access to equal influence does not mean access to IDENTICAL influence. Christ Himself ordained that men alone would be priests and because it comes from the Son of Justice Himself, it is supremely just and correct to continue to follow that divine mandate; He called women to other tasks (i.e. motherhood) from which men are excluded. So, without heretically tampering with the ordination question, some could say there is lot of work to be done is bringing women into many, many more NON-ordained positions of leadership and authority in the Church, even in the Vatican (where there are some powerful female administrators but quite a small number). On the other hand, the Catholic Church has ALWAYS been the first place where women had full power equal to that of men. Go back fifty years to the Catholic Era. How many Catholic Sisters were presidents of Catholic universities; principals of Catholic academies and schools of every stripe imaginable; CEOs of Catholic hospitals, nursing homes, orphanages, care centers, etc., etc., etc.? And I recall in the late 1960s when most convents began vacating these important administrative offices, it was not because anyone (esp. any men) were pushing them out, but because the vapid, empty-headed LCWR-type thinking of that era dictated as much. It was regarded by many nuns as COOL to abandon their chief posts back then and say, almost as a liberal badge of honor "We have a lay president now at our college... I have heard quite enough about the unequal distribution of power in the Church across gender lines, thank you.

    ReplyDelete
  5. the strong implication of the article is that it would have been a better decision to expose the abuses and women would have made that exposure more likely

    That's the correct conclusion (albeit with a few exceptions, of course.)

    In fact, it's likely that many abusers would have assumed room temperature MUCH sooner if they had been discovered in flagrante by a mother.

    ReplyDelete
  6. Pledge of Allegiance is constitutional. Go figure. Remember the important question to ask when you hear people complain about the civil use of "God": "OK. You're offended. But have you been harmed?" We do not enjoy the right not to be offended.

    One of my favorite legal maxims: Lex non favet delicatorum votis (the law does not favor the wishes of the dainty.

    ReplyDelete
  7. Regarding Father's favorite new show Caprica, why should one like a show where monotheism is denigrated as terrorism and polytheism exalted as normal? And why in BSG where the monotheists the "bad guys" and the polytheists the "good guys"? Yeah, I can figure out that the STO'ers (Soldiers of the One) became Cylons who in turn are monotheistic. So a monotheist is a robot intent on murdering people? Isn't that exactly the image the show portrays of Christianity? Isn't that exactly what both Caprica and BSG are saying? That's the sad twist of our society today: good is bad and bad good.

    And sadly, we're becoming exactly like Caprica. Lord have mercy.

    ReplyDelete