Entries Tagged 'Ethics' ↓

The high court in the Presbyterian Church (USA) ruled that a pastor who performed a same-sex marriage cannot be censured, BECAUSE the church does not recognize same-sex marriage. Get a load of this reasoning:

The order issued Tuesday said, “The ceremonies that are the subject of this case were not marriages as the term is defined (by the Book of Order). These were ceremonies between women, not between a man and a woman. … It is not improper for ministers of the Word and Sacrament to perform same sex ceremonies.”

The church’s Book of Order says, “Marriage is a civil contract between a man and a woman,” and does not prohibit blessings of same-sex couples that are not determined to be marriages.

The high court said in the ruling that the lower court had erred by finding Spahr guilty “of that which by definition cannot be done. One cannot characterize same sex ceremonies as marriages for the purpose of disciplining a minister of the Word and Sacrament and at the same time declare that such ceremonies are not marriages for legal or ecclesiastical purposes.”

The church defines marriage as between a man and a woman. A minister marries two women. But the minister cannot be sanctioned because, according to church teaching, gay marriage is impossible. So the minister could not have conducted such a thing.

Thus, the teaching AGAINST gay marriage provides a mechanism for allowing it.

Fed to Pursue Aggressive Checks on Credit Cards - washingtonpost.com:

The Federal Reserve and two other banking regulators are set to unveil today one of the most aggressive efforts in decades to crack down on the credit card industry, prohibiting practices such as arbitrarily raising interest rates on outstanding balances.

The proposed regulations, which could be finalized by year’s end, would label as “unfair or deceptive” practices that consumers have long complained about. That includes charging interest on debt that has been repaid and assessing late fees when consumers are not given a reasonable amount of time to make a payment. When different interest rates apply to different balances on one card, companies would be prohibited from applying a payment first to the balance with the lowest rate.

Before, all the Fed made the credit card companies do was to inform the consumer of such practices. Now, the Fed will forbid them.

Even if you bemoan government interference into businesses and the economy, isn’t this a good idea? Isn’t there a moral issue here that the state does have a Romans 13 right to restrict, namely that all-but-forgotten sin of usury?

The Austrian Josef Fritzl kept his daughter in the basement for 24 years and had seven children with her, who never saw the light of day. He had a “normal” family upstairs that supposedly never knew who lived in their basement. Here is evil on a scale that beggars the imagination.

How those children, the oldest of whom is 18, lived in total isolation and how they are reacting to experiencing for the first time the sight of the moon, the sun, and other human beings is heart-rending. From an article in the London Telegraph, Dungeon children speak their own animal language:

When he was rescued Felix pointed to the moon, which he was seeing for the first time, and said: “Is that God up there?”

He then made excited gurgling noises when he saw a cow.

Doctors said that since he emerged from his prison he is constantly excited and keeps trying to hit the air with his hand.

When he saw the sun for the first time he was even more excited than when he discovered the moon.

He made a squeaking noise and tried to look directly at the sun. When he realised he couldn’t he kept covering his face with his hand.

When police took him in a lift at the hospital he was petrified and clung on to his mother as the floor moved.

Police said he was stunned when one officers started talking into a mobile phone.

Felix was also excited about the police officer’s mobile phones. He was stunned by the ring tones and even more when one of the policemen used his mobile phone to talk.

The youngster also often hums an unknown tune to himself which police believe his mother used to get him to sleep.

More on the 18-year-old and the 5-year-old when they first saw the moon.

The theologian Alasdair MacIntyre wrote a piece during the last presidential election entitled The Only Vote Worth Casting in November arguing that not voting for either of two candidate can be a positive moral action. The first paragraph:

When offered a choice between two politically intolerable alternatives, it is important to choose neither. And when that choice is presented in rival arguments and debates that exclude from public consideration any other set of possibilities, it becomes a duty to withdraw from those arguments and debates, so as to resist the imposition of this false choice by those who have arrogated to themselves the power of framing the alternatives. These are propositions which in the abstract may seem to invite easy agreement. But, when they find application to the coming presidential election, they are likely to be rejected out of hand. For it has become an ingrained piece of received wisdom that voting is one mark of a good citizen, not voting a sign of irresponsibility. But the only vote worth casting in November is a vote that no one will be able to cast, a vote against a system that presents one with a choice between Bush’s conservatism and Kerry’s liberalism, those two partners in ideological debate, both of whom need the other as a target.

MacIntyre is coming from that “consistent pro-life” position, maintaining that we need to be pro-life (which disqualified Kerry) AND pro-economic justice (which disqualified Bush). But if all such ideological purists refuse to get into the fray, wouldn’t that just mean that they are standing up for neither?

HT: Rod Dreher

Petty Officer Mike Monsoor, a Navy SEAL, who died in action in Iraq, is receiving the Congressional Medal of Honor. This is what he did:

Monsoor and a group of SEAL snipers took up position on a residential rooftop as part of an operation to push into a dangerous section of southern Ramadi. Four insurgents armed with AK-47 rifles came into view, and the SEAL snipers opened fire, killing one and wounding another. Loudspeakers from a mosque broadcast calls for insurgents to rally, and residents blocked off nearby roads with rocks.

Insurgents shot back at the SEAL position with automatic weapons from a moving vehicle and fired a rocket-propelled grenade at the building. The SEALs knew that more attacks were inevitable but continued their mission of protecting the troops clearing the area below, according to an official account.

Monsoor’s commander repositioned him in a small hidden location between two SEAL snipers on an outcropping of the roof, facing the most likely route of another insurgent attack. As Monsoor manned his gun, an insurgent lobbed up a hand grenade, which hit Monsoor in the chest and bounced onto the roof.

“Grenade!” Monsoor shouted. But the two snipers and another SEAL on the roof had no time to escape, as Monsoor was closest to the only exit. Monsoor dropped onto the grenade, smothering it with his body. It detonated, and Monsoor died about 30 minutes later from his wounds.

“He made an instantaneous decision to save our teammates. I immediately understood what happened, and tragically it made sense to me in keeping with the man I know, Mike Monsoor,” said Lt. Cmdr. Seth Stone, Monsoor’s platoon leader in Ramadi.

Vatican Updates Its Thou-Shalt-Not List:

In the Vatican’s latest update on how God’s law is being violated in today’s world, Monsignor Gianfranco Girotti, the head of the Apostolic Penitentiary, was asked by the Vatican newspaper L’Osservatore Romano what, in his opinion, are the “new sins.”

He cited “violations of the basic rights of human nature” through genetic manipulation, drugs that “weaken the mind and cloud intelligence,” and the imbalance between the rich and the poor.

“If yesterday sin had a rather individualistic dimension, today it has a weight, a resonance, that’s especially social, rather than individual,” said Girotti, whose office deals with matters of conscience and grants absolution.

Now, in fairness, these are not really “new sins,” as if the church can just declare new things bad that were not bad before. They are applications of the church’s natural law ethic. Still, the shift to more of an emphasis on social sins, as opposed to individual transgressions, does play into the liberal habit of projecting morality out to the fringes of responsibility, playing down individual behavior but emphasizing instead social attitudes as a measure of righteousness and self-righteousness. Hence, the importance of “political correctness” and leftwing posturing.

But it is true that our current technological and cultural context makes possible new ways of transgressing that were not available to sinners before. There is still the same old sexual sin, but now that we have online pornography we have even more ways of committing it.

We can play the same game as the Vatican. What are some “new sins,” in the sense that they are characteristic vices of our particular time that the sinners of the past didn’t have occasion to do?

Who says people today aren’t oriented to liturgies? Consider this article on New York Governor Eliot Spitzer’s press conference, which observes that all of these press conferences in which a politician caught in wrongdoing follow exactly the same pattern: Ritual of Repentance .

First, we watch the news conference. There’s Spitzer, with his wife by his side. He says, “I want to briefly address a private matter.” Then he expresses remorse (albeit vaguely) and promises to “dedicate some time to regain the trust of my family.”

Then, we call Mark Geragos, the high-profile criminal defense attorney, who — as it happens — has not actually seen the news conference. He proceeds to describe the news conference that he has not seen.

“You’ve got to have the dutiful wife and you have to have the ‘it’s a private matter,’ ” Geragos says. “And remorse for the past and plans for the future.”

Whoa.

“If you’ve seen one, you’ve seen ‘em all,” Geragos says.

What are some other secular liturgies?

The governor of New York, Eliot Spitzer, a democrat who made a name for himself prosecuting white-collar shenanigans, was found to be a client of a high-price prostitution ring. His involvement was discovered when law enforcement officials saw suspicious wire transfers of funds that made them think the governor was laundering bribes!

As a rule, sexual misconduct dooms Republicans, but it usually is forgiven Democrats. This, however, looks to be an exception.

Power seems to blind some people, not only to morality but to common sense. Surely a reasonable governor would know that he is a public figure and so he had better stay away from activities that, if discovered, would ruin him. Perhaps such figures rise so high that they think they are entitled to whatever they want, that rules for lesser beings cannot apply to them. The mystery–and stupidity–of iniquity.

Christianity Today online has dusted off an interview with the recently-deceased William F. Buckley from 1995, featuring his advice to Christian activists. The interview shows his own Christian faith, as well as points like these:

What frightens people most about the Religious Right is the rhetoric that is sometimes used. There ought to be some thought given, for example, as to how you formulate your antihomosexual position: it should be more pastoral than vitriolic….

If, at the end of a broadcast by Pat Robertson, fewer people are disposed to Christianity than were before he came on (I’m not saying that is the case), then that would be awful if that were so….

Whatever you want to say about the anti-abortionists, you have got to at least say this: Theirs is the most disinterested act of humanitarian concern since the Emancipation Proclamation. They are not talking about protecting their own child, they are talking about protecting children….

Thomas Aquinas once was asked, “If the public view was that a famine was imminent, would you be justified in charging injurious prices for your grain, knowing that a relief wagon of grain was coming?” Thomas said yes, you would, but it would be wrong. A Christian would not do that.Certain things which the market authorizes simply in terms of law are unchristian and ought not to be done.

The big issue today has to do with the fidelity of marriages. The tendency now to leave your wife because you have an infatuation with a younger woman of tenderer flesh is an enormous temptation. It’s carnal, and it’s also easy to justify with all the solipsistic reasoning that we hear today. That is about the gravest offense that a human being can commit, to throw away a wife.

Dr. Aikman on an urban legend pushed by the “new atheists,” and one of their major blind spots: 

Atheists who spend much of their time revisiting the crimes of religion ought to be quizzed again and again about what happens when governments adopt atheism as their official worldview.It is one of the most erroneous statements in popular culture in America, one of the most inaccurate but frequently repeated “urban legends,” that more people have been killed in wars of religion than any other kind of war.Wrong. If the entire list of victims of every religious war ever fought, from the Crusades, through the wars of religion in Europe after the Protestant Reformation, to the brutal attacks upon each other of Muslims and Hindus in the sub-continent of India is added up, that number is completely dwarfed by those murdered by Communist regimes in the twentieth century.According to some estimates, the number of people murdered under Communism, whether in wars started by Communist regimes, or as a result of internal repression against domestic adversaries, or in policies deliberately intended to produce starvation (Stalin’s holocaust in the Ukraine through starvation in 1933 murdered between seven and eleven million men, women, and children) approaches a total of 100 million.Then there is Hitler, who by general agreement deliberately murdered about twelve million people but started a war that took the lives of some 50 million. Hitler wasn’t technically an atheist – we’ll come to this in a moment –but there is no question that he acted as if there were no Divine personality or moral code above him to which he was going to be held accountable. In short, he certainly acted like someone in total rebellion against God.  

150 million dead!

Roman Catholic bishops in Italy are telling  actors they had better not do sex scenes.  They are catching flak for interfering in the artistic process, but I salute them.

I predict it will be  polyamory. That means committed sexual and quasi-familial relationships between three or more people. Think polygamy, only sometimes with more men than women, and throw in bisexuality. You can do the math.