Posted on 04/04/2005 2:08:39 PM PDT by Pokey78
Beam! ;-) I'm like the 'chick' behind the curtain.
Many thanks for the ping!
Ping!
Is he saying never use contraception? I can't abide.
Worthy of an essay in itself - heck, a whole book.
Many - not all - of the defenders of such enthusiasms as abortion and gay marriage have as their ideological underpinning a religious belief in the inevitable direction of history, which is why "progressives" tend only to view progress in one dimension. This is one of several "gifts" to current political culture from one Karl Marx.
In point of simple fact, no one was more progressive in terms of being a causative agent of change in the 80's and early 90's than the late Pope unless his name was Ronald Reagan. This has contemporary progressives grinding their molars to a powder but it happens to be a fact. Much of the venom we are seeing at the moment from the unclean pens of the Guardian and the NY Times is a result of a political class certain that it was the future watching the real future marching off in an unexpected and decidedly unapproved direction. It's a bitterness with which I find it impossible to sympathize.
Thoughtful atheists ought to be able to recognise that, whatever one's tastes in these areas, the Pope was on to something - that abortion et al, in separating the "two meanings" of sex and leaving us free to indulge in one while ignoring the other, have severed us almost entirely and possibly irreparably from traditional impulses, such as societal survival. John Paul II championed the "splendour of truth" not because he was rigid and inflexible, but because he understood the alternative was a dead end in every sense.
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An argument that cannot be refuted.
BTTT
Dead on, as usual.
You don't even have to agree with John Paul II on everything to see the wisdom in his writings and statements.
FMCDH(BITS)
Steyn is magic.
Thanks for this post.
A priest I know is from Croatia. After talking with him and other Catholics from Eastern Europe, I believe that we as Americans really have a different perspective.
Folks from Eastern Europe say that the Pope along with President Reagan helped to "set them free" (one person used that phrase). Those people will always remember what the Pope and President Reagan (among others) did for them.
Hey! That's me!
FMCDH(BITS)
Well, to nitpick, being African doesn't make one a black necessarily. I'd be willing to bet that Pope St Victor was not black.
PJP II's encyclicals are almost all outstanding. I'd especially recommend Veritatis Splendor as an antidote to the assumptions of our relativist world.
He was a serious theologian and philosopher, among other accomplishments. The encyclicals are groundbreaking but also heavily based on the Bible and biblical texts, which I should make them accessible to Protestants.
well China has its one child per family policy as a matter of "societal survival" which means having to allow birth control and abortion
much as there is to abhor about the Communist government, for many reasons, would it be better to allow millions of Chinese to starve instead? in the name of "principle"
sometimes principle and reality clash
Also amusing is that The Guardian must not know much about Cardinal Arinze, or they would never have plugged him like this. If anything, he's more conservative than PJP II.
This guys genius is not questionable.
Man, to be able to write like this...
sure would make it interesting
the first thing to go is the celibacy only rule for priests, those priests who wish to marry, may, and the rift between the Roman and Orthodox traditions could be finally healed
I did hear this was one of the Pope's greatest disappointments that he was unable to heal the rift
once you allow married priests, the recruitment problem should be solved, the pedophilia problem may be reduced or at least the coverup forgiven and the word of the Church may flourish, a husband and wife team can be more effective in any event
I love Steyn's work because he's funny. But sometimes, he's just right.
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