De Virtutibus; or, Kevin's Kasuist Korner; or, Miller's Moral Musings.

"Why 'De Virtutibus'?"

Balthasar: a Sketch
Book TV.org
Center for Life Principles
Christian Classics Ethereal Library
Coalition of Americans for Research Ethics
Communio
Dominicans
Franciscan University of Steubenville
IntraText Digital Library
John Paul II Institute for Studies on Marriage and Family
Junkscience.com
Christopher Kaczor
Life Issues Institute
Lifeissues.net
Marquette University Institute for Natural Family Planning
National Catholic Bioethics Center
National Right to Life
New Advent
Perseus Digital Library
Priests for Life
Ratzinger Fan Club
The Thomist
USCCB
Vatican

After abortion
Being! Or Nothingness
Catholic Analysis
Catholic and Enjoying It!
Catholic Light
Catholic Ragemonkey
Dappled Things
Dawn Patrol
Disputations
Dyspeptic Mutterings
Envoy Encore
Fructus Ventris
HMS Blog
In Light of the Law
Open Book
Rerum Novarum
SecretAgentMan's Dossier
Sed Contra
Summa Contra Mundum
Thrown Back
Veritas
... and more ...

Catholic News Service
First Things
FOXNews.com
National Catholic Register
National Review Online
Town Hall
Weekly Standard
ZENIT News Agency

Some especially good moral theology reads ...

Aquinas, Summa Theologiae; Ashley & O'Rourke, Health Care Ethics; Cessario, Introduction to Moral Theology; Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Christian Freedom and Liberation - Ecclesial Vocation of the Theologian - Euthanasia - Pastoral Care of Homosexual Persons - Procured Abortion - Profession of Faith - Questions concerning Sexual Ethics - Respect for Human Life in its Origin and Dignity of Procreation - "Theology of Liberation"; DiNoia, Veritatis Splendor and the Renewal of Moral Theology; Gagnon, Bible and Homosexual Practice; Kaczor, Proportionalism and the Natural Law Tradition; de Lubac, Brief Catechesis on Nature and Grace; Matera, New Testament Ethics; Melina, Sharing in Christ's Virtues; Pieper, Faith, Hope, Love - Four Cardinal Virtues; Pinckaers, Sources of Christian Ethics; Schindler, Heart of the World, Center of the Church; Schürmann, Ratzinger, Balthasar, Principles of Christian Morality; Sokolowski, Moral Action; Steck, Ethical Thought of Hans Urs von Balthasar; Vatican II, Apostolate of the Laity - Church in the Modern World - Priestly Formation - Religious Freedom; Wojtyla/John Paul II, Catholic Universities - Church in America - Dignity and Vocation of Women - Faith and Reason - Human Work - Hundredth Anniversary of Rerum Novarum - Gospel of Life - Letter to Families - Lord and Giver of Life - Lord's Day - Love and Responsibility - Mercy of God - Person and Community - Redeemer of Man - Role of the Christian Family in the Modern World - Social Concern - Splendor of Truth - Theology of the Body

Who is this blogging moralist?

Note. This blog adheres to the Welborn Protocol: All correspondence is bloggable unless it requests otherwise - and to the Shea Protocol: At my sole discretion, uncivil commenters will be banned.

The March of Dimes has announced a major fund raising effort to understand and battle premature deliveries. March of Dimes medical director Dr. Nancy Green told Time magazine that the 27 percent rise in premature births over the last few decades "is a mystery."
(http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1101030210-418559,00.html)

Dr. Green's claim that the rise in premature birth rates is a mystery reflects either a distressing ignorance of the medical literature or a calculated case of selective recall.

At least 48 published studies have shown significantly higher risk of premature birth and low birth weight deliveries among women with a history of abortion.(1-48) One of the best, a Danish record based study (1), found the risk doubled after just one abortion. Multiple abortions increase the risk even more. A doubling of risk among an estimated one-fourth of delivering women who have a prior history of abortion would result in a 25 percent rise overall.

The only real mystery surrounding the 27 percent rise in premature delivery rates among the post-Roe generation of women is why the March of Dimes has failed to call attention to this major risk factor. Their fact sheets downplay the risk of abortion, stating only that women are at higher risk of premature delivery if they "have had more than three abortions or miscarriages." Other risk factors such as drinking, smoking, and drug use are also elevated by a history of abortion.

The March of Dimes professes that its position on abortion is one of neutrality. This is a good position to be in if one is trying to gather in donations from as large an audience as possible.

But the fact that the March of Dimes encourages prenatal screening for birth defects that can only be "treated" by abortion does not support the claim that they are neutral. Instead, it supports the view that the March of Dimes is encouraging eugenic targeting of "unfit" children that do not "deserve to be born." Their refusal to aggressively educate the public about the role abortion plays in heightening the risk posed to subsequent pregnancies is another sign that their claim of neutrality is a just a veneer over a pro-abortion, eugenic- minded "charity."

According to the March of Dimes, "In 2000, hospital charges for 23,000 prematurity-related infant stays totaled $1.2 billion. The average charge was $58,000 per baby, compared to $4,300 for a typical newborn stay."
(http://www.marchofdimes.com/aboutus/791_6775.asp) Treatment of these children through employer health plans is estimated at $4.7 billion per year. One fifth of these costs may be is attributable to extra cases of prematurity arising from abortion-related morbidity.

Premature birth is the leading cause of neonatal death and is related to increased risk of cerebral palsy, vision and hearing loss, retardation and other lifelong health problems.

You can register your complaints about the March of Dimes coverup by calling 1-888-MODIMES.

-------

The list of 48 studies showing abortion's relationship to premature birth and low birth rate deliveries compiled by Brent Rooney can be found at http://www.vcn.bc.ca/~whatsup/APB-Major.html.

The way Tito kept Yugoslavs from killing each other was he did it for them. This is the same technique used by the Romans, Byzantines, Ottomans, Austro-Hungarians, Nazi Germans, and everyone else who's had the misfortune to rule the Balkans. ...

Although Tito himself was of mixed Croat/Slovene/son-of-a-bitch background, his World War II Partisan troops were mostly Serbs. In 1946, 100,000 anti-Tito Croat refugees were handed over to Tito by the ever-admirable British. Tito's Partisans then killed something between 40,000 and all of them, with the usual number of women, children, and old people included. Of course, the Partisans didn't do this for a lark. The Croats, under raving nationalist Ante Pavelic, had established a Nazi puppet state in 1941 and killed as many as 350,000 Serbs.

Tito tried to eliminate Balkanization in the Balkans by proscribing the nationalism of Serbia, Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia, Macedonia, and Montenegro while, at the same time, carefully apportioning the number of government and Communist Party jobs given to Serbs, Slovenes, Croats, Bosnians, Macedonians, Montenegrins, and whatever the rest of the people in these parts call themselves. Everyone was supposed to be a Yugoslavian ("South Slav") and get together and sing one national anthem, "Hej, Sloveni" ("Hey, Slavs"). This worked about as well as you'd expect a country with a national anthem called "Hey, Slavs" to work. ...

You mustn't ever ask the Yugoslavs why they're fighting. They'll tell you. And there's no straightening it out. If you look at a topographical map of the Balkans, you see nothing that would serve as a national boundary and no area - no plain, valley, coastline, or mountain fastness - coherent or extensive enough to put a boundary around. It was a confused region before nations or even people existed - not big enough to be a continent, too big to be a peninsula, wrinkled, creased, puckered, the cellulite thigh of Europe.

To this bad hash of terrian came a worse omlette of population. The Balkans separate Asia from the West, divide the steppes from the Mediterranean, lie athwart the road from Baltic ice and snow to Adriatic topless beaches. Most of the roving bands, nomadic tribes, pillaging hordes, and migrating populations of history have passed through the Balkans. Every time they did, they'd tell their most objectionable members to go camp around the corner. Then the band, tribe, horde, or population would sneak off.

The Christians hate the Muslims because Christians were peons under the Ottomans. The Muslims hate the Christians because Muslims were pissants under the Communists. The Croats hate the Serbs for collaborating with the Communists the same way the Serbs hate the Croats for collaborating with the Nazis, and now the Bosnians hate the Montenegrins for collaborating with the Serbs. The Serbs hate the Albanians for coming to Yugoslavia. Everyone hates the Serbs because there are more of them than anyone else to hate and because, when Yugoslavia was created in 1918 (with the help of know-it-all American President Woodrow Wilson), the Serbs grabbed control of the government and army and haven't let go yet. And everybody hates the Slovenes, too, for getting out of this civil war after only ten days.

It's hard to come back from the Balkans and not sound like a Pete Seeger song. ...

An e-friend of mine has started a blog about her abortion. It is quite fascinating. She calls it The S.I.C.L.E. Cell, where S.I.C.L.E. is a Self Imposed Child Loss Experience. The S.I.C.L.E. Cell

Roch A. Kereszty, O.Cist., Jesus Christ: Fundamentals of Christology, rev. and updated ed. (Alba House, 2002).

Here and excursus seems warranted on what we may call eschatological humanism. By this we mean that only eschatological salvation achieves our perfection as human beings. Our full potential is realized not only through our union with Christ, but through Christ, with every member of redeemed humankind. Separated individuals cannot unfold in themselves all the perfections of human nature. The "idea of humanity" in its full richness, as conceived by God from all eternity and realized gradually in history, can be actualized in each individual only in a limited and one-sided fashion. For instance, it is hardly possible to develop simultaneously such diverse gifts as poetic creativity and mathematical talent, let alone to combine the self-giving love of a mother with the single-hearted devotion of a virgin. Every individual is only one variation of the potentially limitless ways of being human. Thus the individual will become perfect as a human being only if, in some way, he or she can appropriate all human values. No individual man or woman can do this except by entering into communion with all men and women, past, present, and future who have developed their humanity. Thus, the only one through whom we can reach all men and women of all ages is the one in whom they are alive and who keeps them united: the risen Christ present in them through the Holy Spirit. Through the Spirit of Christ we will participate not only in everyone else's supernatural gifts but also in their human perfections. Of course, such mutual possession of one another's perfections will not lead to the extinction of the unique beauty of each individual. The poet will still be very different from the mathematician, the mother with a large family will still be easily distinguishable from the twelve-year-old St. Agnes, virgin and martyr. Yet by loving the special beauty of the other and by loving it as belonging to the other, each will in some way share in the perfections of all. Thus will the love uniting all the redeemed in Christ result in the enrichment of each individual by the riches of all. A radical humanism, the full actualization of the human potential, is possible only in the eschatological Christ.

As he is the philosopher of transcendence, Kierkegaard is the theologian of objectivity. But he is at the same time the theologian of inwardness, that is to say, of personal appropriation. The problem he handles in the Postscript is consequently a subjective problem: it is a question of determining the relationship of the subject to the truth of Christianity - more concretely, the relation of the individual to Christian reality: most simply of all, it is a question of how to become a Christian.

I will say it again, as I do not understand your fixation on this issue. Are doctors facing more of a crisis with malpractice insurance than many of their patients are facing with the cost of health insurance?

How can the former but not the latter be perceived by doctors to be an acute public health problem?

There is no political will among doctors to police the substandard members of their own ranks. They expect the public to bear all of the costs of such substandard care.

They might as well view high malpractice premiums as the downside cost of operating without accountability for the quality of their care

and without commitment to the equality of access to their services,

both of which make the professional life of a doctor financially rewarding and relatively risk free, compared to other professions and the average member of the employed public.

In the present state of the world, a virile, strong Christianity must become a heroic Christianity. But this adjective is a description, it must not become a definition, in which case it would be a falsification. ... For, if Christianity can and should assume the virtues of ancient paganism, the Christian who would remain faithful is bound to reject with a categorical No a neopaganism that has set itself up against Christ. Gentleness and goodness, considerateness toward the lowly, pity for those who suffer, rejection of perverse methods, protection of the oppressed, unostentatious self-sacrifice, resistance to lies, the courage to call evil by its proper name, love of justice, the spirit of peace and concord, open-heartedness, mindfulness of heaven; those are the things that Christian heroism will rescue. All this so-called "slave morality" will be shown to be a morality of free men and the sole source of man's freedom.

Christians have not been promised that they will always be in the majority. (Rather the reverse.) Nor that they will always seem the strongest and that men will never be conquered by another ideal than theirs. But, whatever happens, Christianity will never have any real efficacy, it will never have any real existence or make any real conquests, except by the strength of its own spirit, by the strength of charity.

... There is the sacredness of myth which, like vapor rising from the earth, emanates from infrahuman regions; and there is the sacredness of mystery, which is like peace descending from the heavens. The one links us with Nature and attunes us to her rhythm but also enslaves us to her fatal powers; the other is the gift of the spirit that makes us free. ...

... Mystery does not refuse to make use of myth, any more than reason does in the human order; on the contrary, mystery takes over a part of it, filters it, purifies it - exorcises it, as it were. There is an authentic sacredness in the cosmos, for it is full of "vestiges" of divinity. There is a "mystique of the earth." But it needs to be christianized. When it aspires to reign alone, it is no longer even terrestrial; the mark of the Spirit of Evil is upon it.

Competition should be considered extremely important. Such competition is not the same as envy which leads a person to wish to prevent a neighbor from attaining some good lest the neighbor get ahead. Rather, the race should be run with a holy rivalry and with a thirst for the heavenly fountain, not in such a way as to create obstacles for someone else. Oh, if only this competition existed in Christian hearts ... ! ...

Now, my child, we are celebrating a season when running and enduring are more necessary than we are accustomed to. For when we consider the depth of the mystery of redemption presented to us during these days, how much more should we not endure and persevere!

First of all we see the mercy that conquered justice and that, acting as an intercessor with the eternal Father, induced God to send the only-begotten Son and clothe him with human flesh for our salvation. ... The omnipotent God became an infant susceptible to all human miseries: the immortal and immutable one became mortal and mutable; the divine one became human; the most wise one became, so to speak, foolish before others; the Lord whom angels serve became a slave of human beings.

Who then, being aware of this mercy, would not marvel at the knowledge that all these things took place so that human nature might pay the debt owed to the divine Essence? ... Behold one rich in treasure, ready and eager to pay the debt for us and to restore us as the heirs to our heavenly homeland. Indeed, this consideration should restrain us from doing anything that is earthly and empty.

Being profoundly moved by the example of the depths of charity shown by the Son of God to his insignificant creation, it behooves us to run this race. One in nature with us, Christ himself ran the race so quickly as to embrace very great suffering.

My child, we must run this same race and without restraint throw ourselves into this great sea that we may be washed and cleansed, for all this was accomplished for us. ...

... These reflections are offered primarily to those engaged in pastoral work so that they might be able to explain how the New Age movement differs from the Christian faith. This study invites readers to take account of the way that New Age religiosity addresses the spiritual hunger of contemporary men and women. It should be recognized that the attraction that New Age religiosity has for some Christians may be due in part to the lack of serious attention in their own communities for themes which are actually part of the Catholic synthesis such as the importance of man' spiritual dimension and its integration with the whole of life, the search for life's meaning, the link between human beings and the rest of creation, the desire for personal and social transformation, and the rejection of a rationalistic and materialistic view of humanity.

The present publication calls attention to the need to know and understand New Age as a cultural current, as well as the need for Catholics to have an understanding of authentic Catholic doctrine and spirituality in order to properly assess New Age themes. The first two chapters present New Age as a multifaceted cultural tendency, proposing an analysis of the basic foundations of the thought conveyed in this context. From Chapter Three onwards some indications are offered for an investigation of New Age in comparison with the Christian message. Some suggestions of a pastoral nature are also made. ... more

... Q. Are you getting Catholic priests transitioning to become Episcopal priests? Episcopal priests can marry.

A. Yes, we are. We have two in process. Because of the covenant with the Archdiocese (of Milwaukee), we have to send them to Chicago or to Fond du Lac, or move them to another diocese. We don't encourage Roman Catholic clergy to come to us, we don't want to be a cause of scandal.

The usual reason has to do with celibacy, not necessarily that they are going to get married, but they want that option.

Q. Are you getting more Catholic priests because of recent sex abuse scandals?

A. I don't think so.

Q. Have you gotten many Catholic priests from Wisconsin and elsewhere?

A. I'd say over the last 10 years, 10 or a dozen. I mean, I have three former Jesuits. It sort of blows your mind. ...

... After receiving numerous letters and e-mails from parishioners concerning Crowley, Wuerl decided to visit the parish. He arrived wearing white-and-gold vestments and as he walked up the steps to the church, was confronted with the crowd chanting "Crowley, Crowley, Crowley."

The smiling bishop told a woman in the crowd that people should be chanting Jesus' name.

"He's as close to Jesus as we know," the woman replied. ...

This vocation to perfect love is not restricted to a small group of individuals. The invitation, "go, sell your possessions and give the money to the poor," and the promise "you will have treasure in heaven," are meant for everyone, because they bring out the full meaning of the commandment of love for neighbor, just as the invitation which follows, "Come, follow me," is the new, specific form of the commandment of love of God. Both the commandments and Jesus' invitation to the rich young man stand at the service of a single and indivisible charity, which spontaneously tends towards that perfection whose measure is God alone: "You, therefore, must be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect" (Mt 5:48). In the Gospel of Luke, Jesus makes even clearer the meaning of this perfection: "Be merciful, even as your Father is merciful" (Lk 6:36).