Stem Cells for Dummies

Stem Cells for Dummies
Explained by Senior Fellow at Culture of Life Foundation

By E. Christian Brugger

WASHINGTON, D.C., MARCH 24, 2009 (Zenit.org).- Given the new Presidential order allowing federal funds for research using human embryonic stem cells, it might be helpful for readers to become more familiar with the terminology used in any discussion of controversies surrounding embryonic stem cell research.

What is a Stem Cell?

A stem cell, whether of the adult or embryonic type, is an undifferentiated cell (i.e., a cell that has not yet specialized into a particular cell type, e.g., liver cell, pancreatic cell, or cardiac cell) with two unique capacities: the first, for rapid and prolonged self-multiplication into daughter cells identical with itself; and the second, for development and differentiation into specific types of cells such as liver and cardiac cells.

What is a Stem Cell’s Potency?

A stem cell’s “potency” refers to its capacity for differentiation, that is, for developing into particular kinds of human cells, e.g. liver, kidney, blood, etc. Different types of stem cells have different scopes to their potency: e.g., totipotent, pluripotent, multipotent or unipotent. A totipotent cell is capable of differentiating into every tissue in the human body, including extra-embryonic support tissues necessary for human gestation (e.g., placenta, umbilical cord, amniotic sac); a single-celled embryo, also called a zygote, possesses the capacity of totipotency; also, the individual cells of an embryo’s body, called blastomeres, in the first few days of the embryo’s life are totipotent; if a blastomere splits off from the embryo’s body, it has the capacity for complete human development, which is how we get identical twins. A pluripotent cell is capable of differentiating into almost all the tissues of the human body, but not the extra-embryonic support tissues; embryonic stem cells are pluripotent. Stem cells can also be multipotent (capable of differentiating into the cells of a cell group type, e.g., blood cells) and unipotent (unable to differentiate into any other cell type than itself).

What are the Differences between Embryonic and Adult Stem Cells?

Embryonic stem cells (ESCs) are undifferentiated, self-renewing, pluripotent cells. They are harvested from the bodies of embryos at approximately day five of human development. At day five the embryo’s body takes the shape of a hollow sphere (the embryo at this time is called a “blastocyst”). The blastocyst has an outer cell layer and an inner cell mass (picture a basketball with a small group of marbles clumped together on the inside). The cells of the inner cell mass will eventually differentiate into the varied tissues of the person’s body; and the outer cell layer will develop into the placenta and other support tissues. But it is important to understand that at this point, both the outer cell layer and inner cell mass constitute the embryo’s body. The inner cell mass can be understood to be the embryo’s internal organs. These cells are what we call embryonic stem cells and have the capacity of pluripotency; they are coveted by ESC researchers precisely because of their pluripotency. Just as harvesting all the internal organs of an adult would kill the adult, harvesting the stem cells of an embryo kills the embryo.

Adult stem cells (ASCs) also have the capacities of self-proliferation and differentiation, but are not derived from the bodies of embryos. They are ‘adult’ not because they’re found only in adults, but because the tissue in which they’re found is differentiated tissue (as opposed to the undifferentiated tissue of an embryo’s body). Thus ASCs can be found in newborn tissue. In fact, some of the most clinically valuable ASCs are found in umbilical cord blood. Although some ASCs have been found with the capacity of pluripotency, most are only capable of differentiating into the tissue type or related group type of the tissue in which they’re found.

Ethical controversy surrounding stem cell research

Every reasonable person agrees that the clinical end being sought in stem cell research is praiseworthy -- namely, finding clinical solutions for remediating serious illnesses. Controversy surrounds the means by which that end is pursued. The familiar ethical question raised by ESC research is this: Is it justifiable to kill human embryos in order to explore potentially healing remedies for other persons? Those who judge human embryos to be human beings, albeit at an early stage of development, think it’s wrong. Those who believe embryos are “pre-human” entities, developmental precursors to whole human beings, think it sometimes can be justified.[1]

ASC research avoids this ethical problem by avoiding research on embryos altogether. The ethical questions surrounding ASC research then are similar to those involved with all research on human subjects: Do the benefits promised by the research outweigh the burdens imposed by it for the human subjects of the research? Is fully informed consent being secured? Is truthfulness in reporting of data being maintained? Are unwarranted promises of benefit being eschewed? And so on. If the answer to these is yes, then one may proceed with confidence that the research is legitimate. In fact, the Vatican and the United States Conference of Catholic bishops have consistently supported research on stem cells that does not exploit or destroy human embryos[2]. This support is reaffirmed in the new Vatican document on bioethical questions, Dignitas Personae[3].

Don’t current findings demonstrate that ESC research is clinically unnecessary?

This is a very important question and should be asked often of scientists and public officials. Let me elaborate it: since ASCs have already proven remarkably effective in treating serious diseases, including formerly untreatable diseases[4], and since ESC research, despite billions of dollars spent, has produced nothing but failures on the clinical front, and even human tragedies[5], and since the desire to develop clinically useful patient-specific pluripotent stem cells is being rapidly and efficiently fulfilled by the new and remarkable Induced Pluripotent Stem Cells (iPSCs)[6], why aren’t embryonic stem cells obsolete in the minds of scientists? Why does the scientific community insist on greater liberties for embryo-destructive experimentation when both moral reasoning and cutting edge science point in another direction? Why this lust for the embryo?[7]

I don’t have a satisfactory answer to this. Some researchers obviously believe that embryonic stem cells, despite current evidence, promise benefits that ASCs and iPSCs do not. I’m also told that many of the best researchers are turning away from ESCs because of the mounting problems they pose, and turning towards research with iPSCs. If this is the case, then the questions posed above need to be put frankly to our politicians, because some still seem to think that the future of stem cell research lies with ESCs.

In the shadow of President Obama’s executive order overturning the Bush stem cell policy, the House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) stated on the House floor that the U.S. House will take up a bill in early April to overturn the 1996 Dickey-Wicker Amendment prohibiting federal funding from research involving the creation or destruction of human embryos [8]. With all we now know, why is Congress bent on spending taxpayer money for embryo destructive experimentation? Isn’t that scientifically retrogressive and economically wasteful, not to mention morally unjust to the embryos killed as a result of the decision and to taxpayers who object to public funds being used for such research when alternatives are available?

Postscript:

Some might be wondering what distinguishes the “Bush stem cell policy” (Aug. 2001) from the restrictions imposed by the Dickey-Wicker amendment (1996). Dickey-Wicker was passed before ESC research was launched in 1998 by the first successful isolation of ESCs by James A. Thomson’s lab at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. It simply restricted funding on research that created or destroyed human embryos. After 1998, pressure was exerted on the Clinton administration to free up funds for this new ‘promising’ type of research. But Dickey-Wicker stood in the way. Thus, to sidestep the restrictions Clinton, as he was leaving office (2000), approved federal guidelines permitting the NIH to fund research on stem cells derived from ‘spare’ embryos slated for destruction at fertility clinics. Do you see the slight of hand? By the time stem cells are derived, the killing is over. If private funds paid for the killing, then the federal government would fund the subsequent research. Clinton’s lawyers argued that his guidelines conformed to Dickey-Wicker, and legalistically construed, they did. At once, the NIH began accepting grant proposals from scientists bent on embryo destructive research. Aware of the loophole, newly elected President George W. Bush passed an executive order permitting federal funds for ESC research only on certain pre-approved stem cell lines created by that date. Since stem cells can self-proliferate indefinitely, these sixty lines, he thought, would provide subject matter for years of viable research. But under the new policy, funding would be prohibited from all stem cell lines derived after August 2001. NIH grant proposals thereafter were carefully reviewed to ensure that federal funds would not be used to facilitate harm to human embryos. Obama’s recent presidential order overturned the Bush restrictions. Dickey-Wicker however still stands. But for how long?

Notes:

[1] I critiqued several of the most prominent theoretical arguments against the personhood of human embryos in my June 2008 CLF Brief entitled “Arguments for and Against the Personhood of the Embryo”, so I do not intend to engage that question here.

[2] See Pontifical Academy for Life, Declaration on the Production and the Scientific and Therapeutic Use of Human Embryonic Stem Cells (August 25, 2000); Catholic Online, “American Bishops Reaffirm Church Support for Adult Stem-Cell Research,” www.catholic.org, June 26, 2006, www.catholic.org/national/national_story.php?id=20275.

[3] See Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Instruction Dignitas Personae (On Certain Bioethical Questions) (2008), nos. 24, 31, 32.

[4] For an enlightening updated summary of clinical successes using ASCs prepared by the Family Research Council, see
http://www.frc.org/insight/adult-stem-cell-success-stories-2008-update-july-december

[5] Recall the recent tragic story of the 9 year old Israeli boy, who received embryonic stem cell injections in Russia for a lethal brain disease, and contracted as a result tumors on his brain and spinal cord; see CBS News report, “Study: Stem Cell Injections Caused Tumors: Israeli Researchers Say Fetal Stem Cells Led To Benign Tumors For Boy With Rare Genetic Disease,” Feb. 17, 2009; available at http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2009/02/17/health/main4808339.shtml?source=RSSattr=Health_4808339

[6] Induced pluripotent stem cells are differentiated cells such as a skin cell that are “reprogrammed” back to a state of pluripotency. They were first reported in research with human cells in November 2007. I describe their advent and initial promise in my CLF Brief from January 2008, “A Moral Tsunami”. Since then dozens of studies have been carried out (and published) perfecting the initiate technique. For example, researchers at the Whitehead Institute in Cambridge, Mass., recently converted skin cells from patients with Parkinson’s disease into the type of neuron destroyed by the disease. Although the technique needs perfecting, it promises to provide a therapy one day that replaces the damaged neural tissue of Parkinson’s sufferers with healthy tissue derived from the patient’s own body, and therefore with no risk of immune rejection. See the NY Times on line report, “Converting Cells Shows Promise for Parkinson’s”, March 6, 2009, available at www.nytimes.com/2009/03/06/health/06parkinsons.html

[7] See Bernadine Healy’s piece in US News and World Report on line, “Why Embryonic Stem Cells Are Obsolete” March 04, 2009, available at http://health.usnews.com/blogs/heart-to-heart/2009/3/4/why-embryonic-stem-cells-are-obsolete.html

[8] The exchange between Hoyer and House Minority Whip Eric Cantor (R-Va.) on the floor of the U.S. House of Representatives on March 12, 2009 can be read in the Congressional Record, House, page H3376, March 12, 2009.

* * *

E. Christian Brugger is a Senior Fellow of Ethics at the Culture of Life Foundation and is an associate professor of moral theology at St. John Vianney Theological Seminary in Denver, Colorado. He received his D.Phil. from Oxford in 2000.

The perils of modern media on the youth

This story is just sad. What a tragedy. But one wonders... what did her parents initially teacher her (if anything) that she'd send a nude photo to a boyfriend??? Did they even try to restrict cell phone usage and MySpace???? All that stuff is garbage and is really the heart of the matter.

Family wants tougher laws
By Cindy Kranz

Jessica Logan's nude cell-phone photo - meant for her boyfriend's eyes only - was sent to hundreds of teenagers last year in at least seven Greater Cincinnati high schools.

The 18-year-old Sycamore High School senior was then bombarded with taunts: slut, porn queen, whore.

On July 3, Jessie hanged herself in her bedroom.

She was Albert and Cynthia Logan's only child.

"My only baby that I will never be able to touch again," Cynthia Logan said through tears. "I will never have grandchildren. I will never be able to hand down my heirlooms. I'm just devastated by these parents that allow their children to do and say anything they want."

Now, Jessie's parents are attempting to launch a national campaign seeking laws to address "sexting" - the practice of forwarding and posting sexually explicit cell-phone photos online. The Logans also want to warn teens of the harassment, humiliation and bullying that can occur when that photo gets forwarded.

Cynthia Logan and Parry Aftab, an attorney and one of the leading authorities on Internet security and cyberbullying, plan to attach Jessie's name to a national campaign to educate teens about the dangers of sexting.

Aftab, based in New York, is the catalyst for a network of volunteers working to stop cyberbullying. She operates two Web sites: wiredsafety.org, the world's largest and oldest cyber safety organization, and stopcyberbullying.org.

"Schools need to understand our kids are targeting each other and how technology is being used as a weapon," Aftab said. "None of them (the schools) know what to do. Many of them ... think it's not their problem. They want to close their eyes and put fingers in their ears, saying it's a home issue."

Compassionate and carefree
Jessie's friends and family described her as an artistic, bubbly, compassionate carefree spirit who had many friends in several schools. She was also a "tiger," who would relentlessly stand up for someone.

"But she couldn't stand up for herself," Albert Logan said.

"I think when you're constantly knocked down, you lose your self-esteem," his wife added.

Jessie was not alone in sending nude cell-phone photos. Her friends point to the increasing pressure on teenage girls to send nude photos to their boyfriends.

A national study by the National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy revealed that 1 in 5 teen girls or 22 percent say they have electronically sent or posted nude or semi-nude images online of themselves.

Some area school resource officers and principals estimate that at least half of the students have an inappropriate photo on their cell phone.

After the cell-phone photo was disseminated, Jessie's outgoing personality turned inward.

The Logans blame a circle of five friends from three other high schools for forwarding the photo.

According to Cynthia Logan, Jessie took the photo and sent it to the boy she had been dating for one to two months. He, in turn, forwarded it to four girls, she said. Efforts to reach the former boyfriend were unsuccessful.

Lauren Taylor, a friend since childhood and a Sycamore senior last year, discovered the photo had been forwarded when two girls in her class showed it off. She broke the news to Jessie.

"Her head just dropped, and she started crying," Lauren said. "And then, we went straight up to the counselor's office. And after that, she did not want to go back out in the hallway.

"She just totally changed. She wasn't as outgoing and kind of kept to herself, where she would normally be like jumping around. Instead her head was just down, and she would always be crying," Lauren said. "I remember her constantly calling my phone crying."

When the taunting started at school, Jessie skipped classes, sometimes slipping out a door to sleep in her car in the parking lot. When truancy notices showed up, her mother started dropping her off at school, but Jessie hid crying in the school bathroom.

"I watched her get kicked out of maybe three or four parties over the summer just for having 'a reputation,' " said Steven Arnett, a friend of hers who graduated last year from Moeller High School.

After seeing what Jessie went through, he said, "There's no reason to send pictures like that, no matter what a guy asks for. I don't think that's an acceptable thing to do."

She couldn't even escape when she went home, her close friends said.

"I'd be with her and she'd get numbers that weren't even in her contacts, random numbers that she didn't know, texting her, 'You're a whore, you're a slut,' " Lauren said.

"Or, she'd get on MySpace and get messages from people calling her those names, or Facebook would be the same way. It was constant. She'd go home thinking, 'Oh I'm going to get away from this,' but she never could get away from it."

The Logans said Sycamore High School and the school resource officer didn't do enough to help Jessie. Sycamore sent truancy notices, Cynthia Logan said, but no calls or letters about what was happening to her daughter in school and no notices to other parents about explicit cell-phone photos. And no charges were filed by the resource officer, she said.

Sycamore Superintendent Adrienne James said she couldn't discuss specifics of Jessie's situation. The perils of technology was a topic at a parent information night, she said.

"It is a form of bullying, and that is something we cannot tolerate. The difficulty is stopping it. ... That's why we stress with our kids that the moment you push 'send,' the damage is done."

Educators and parents must be involved, James said, in talking to teens about making good choices, positive self-imaging and avoiding risky behaviors.

Montgomery Officer Paul Payne, the school resource officer, said he confronted some of the girls who forwarded Jessie's photo, even though they attend another school. He asked them to delete the photo from their phones.

"Could she have pressed charges? No, because she's 18," Payne said, adding that there were some areas that could have been explored. "The investigation stopped at her wish, because she basically didn't want this to go any further. ... You respect the wishes of an 18-year-old. In the eyes of the law, she can make her own decision."

Payne said he supports the Logans' efforts to change laws. "Let's face it. The law hasn't caught up to what the original law was designed for."

Jessie expressed regrets about taking and sending the photo, her mother said. She wanted to warn other kids. At Payne's suggestion, she did an anonymous television interview.

"My little girl wanted to get the message out to other children not to make the same mistake she did," Albert Logan said.

Despite missing so much school, Jessie graduated. She began making plans for a new job and college at the University of Cincinnati, where she would major in graphic design.

Then, a 16-year-old Sycamore student hanged himself last June 27. Cynthia Logan put her arms around her daughter, who was sobbing when she heard. Against her parents' wishes, Jessie went to his visitation and funeral, because a friend needed a ride.

'She snapped all of a sudden'
After the boy's funeral, Jessie went to Lauren's house and ranted about why the boy had committed suicide.

"She just kept crying," Lauren said. "Basically, what she kept saying was, 'How could he do this to his family? How could he put his family through so much pain, and his friends? ... I never thought that she would go and do the same thing."

Later that day, Jessie's mother suggested that she just stay home and chill out.

Jessie complained that she was 18 and planned to go out.

Jessie took a shower before getting ready. Her dad was home. Cynthia Logan was on the phone with her brother, walking in the hallway, when Jessie came out of the bathroom and went into her bedroom.

"That is the last time I saw my daughter alive," Cynthia Logan said, her voice lowering to a whisper.

Her mother discovered Jessie hanging in her bedroom.

"There sat her phone. Her straightener was hot. She was ready to go out. I don't know what happened," she said, choking back tears. "It was impulsive, like she snapped all of a sudden. You have all this weight, and it was just one more thing."

The Logans may never have closure. She did not leave a note.

Jessie placed five phone calls before she died.

The Logans wonder if something that was said in a cell-phone conversation set her off during the last moments of her life.

Albert and Cynthia Logan have gone public with Jessie's story, hoping to change vague state laws that don't hold anyone accountable for sexting. They also want to warn kids about what can happen when nude cell-phone photos are shared.

"We want a bill passed," Cynthia Logan said.

"It's a national epidemic. Nobody is doing anything - no schools, no police officers, no adults, no attorneys, no one."

Obama commencement... at Notre Dame?!

George Weigel kicks off the diatribe against America's Catholic University
for this absurd decision. Others include: James Schall, Ralph McInerney, RR Reno, Fr. George Ruttler et al.

Weigel and McInerney are quite good, they are included below... View the rest here.

A Moral Exemplar?
Should the University of Notre Dame honor our most anti-life president?

An NRO Symposium

The University of Notre Dame has announced that Pres. Barack Obama will be the principal speaker and will receive an honorary doctor of laws degree at the university’s commencement on Sunday, May 17. The invitation comes after the president has taken several official actions that directly oppose the Catholic Church’s most sacred teachings. National Review Online asked some of our experts on education and Catholicism for their comments.


GEORGE WEIGEL
Notre Dame’s decision to make President Obama its 2009 commencement speaker is a very bad thing. It’s bad for Notre Dame, bad for Catholic moral witness in America, and bad for the bishops who are trying to mount a defense against the Obama administration’s assault on the conscience rights of Catholic health-care professionals.

The invitation to deliver a commencement address, especially when coupled with the award of an honorary degree, is not a neutral act. It’s an act by which a Catholic institution of higher learning says, “This is a life worth emulating according to our understanding of the true, the good, and the beautiful.” It is frankly beyond my imagining how Notre Dame can say that of a president who has put the United States back into the business of funding abortion abroad; a president who made a mockery of the very idea of moral argument in his speech announcing federal funding for embryo-destructive stem cell research; a president whose administration and its congressional allies are snatching tuition vouchers out of the hands of desperately poor Washington, D.C., children who just as desperately want to attend Catholic schools.

As to Lenin’s question, “What, then, is to be done?,” one does not risk a charge of cynicism by suggesting that the most effective advocates for Notre Dame’s recovering its senses will be alumni and other donors capable of withdrawing or withholding contributions in the range of seven, eight, or nine figures. That is the sad state to which things have descended under the Golden Dome: moral argument seems to be unavailing with the leaders of an institution dedicated to developing the arts of moral reason.

RALPH McINERNY
Bernie Madoff has declined an honorary doctorate in economics from the University of Notre Dame, but all is not lost. Barack Hussein Obama, enabler in chief of abortion, has agreed to speak at the 2009 commencement and to receive an honorary doctorate of law. That abortion and its advocacy violate a primary precept of natural law reinforced by the Catholic Church’s explicit doctrine is a mere bagatelle. Wackos of all kinds will kick up a fuss, of course, but their protest will go unnoticed in South Bend. The pell-mell pursuit of warm and fuzzy Catholicism will continue. How better to defend the faith than to celebrate a man who advocates polishing off babies even after they are born? The newly created Herod Award will be added to the university’s recognition of the chief magistrate. Administrators are hugging themselves with delight at this massive publicity coup. The national championship in football has eluded Notre Dame for many years, but when the president dribbles onto the stage at the great event, the hall will erupt in ecstatic applause; the president, Father Jenkins, will wring his hand; and a final nail will be driven into the coffin of a once-great Catholic university. No one will note nor long remember what Barack Obama says on the occasion. Who listens to commencement addresses? But the Lady atop the golden dome, recalling the flight into Egypt, will exhibit one of her many titles: She who weeps.

Moscow Patriarchate Backs Pope's Stance on Condoms

From Zenit.
Says They Can't Be Considered Remedy Against AIDS

MOSCOW, MARCH 20, 2009 (Zenit.org).- The Russian Orthodox Church is supporting Benedict XVI's position that condoms are not an acceptable solution to AIDS.

A message on the French official Web site of the Church stated, "The Patriarchate of Moscow is in solidarity with Pope Benedict XVI's position on the means in the fight against AIDS, and on the fact that condoms cannot be considered as a remedy against this sickness."

This statement came as a response to the Pope's words to journalists on his flight to Africa, in which he affirmed: "This problem of AIDS cannot be overcome only with publicity slogans.

"If there is not the soul, if the Africans are not helped, the scourge cannot be resolved with the distribution of condoms: on the contrary, there is a risk of increasing the problem."

Today the deputy chairman of the Moscow Patriarchate Department for External Church Relations, Archpriest Vsevolod Chaplin, said "It is incorrect to see condoms as a panacea for AIDS."

He noted that AIDS can be prevented not by contraceptives but by education and a righteous life, as the Orthodox Church also teaches.

"The spread of AIDS will only be halted with the ethical education of the affected peoples, and not with recourse to condoms," states the Church's communiqué.

The Russian agency Interfax reported Friday that Father Tchapline took part in a round table in Moscow on the subject. He pointed out that at present certain organizations attempt to simultaneously emphasize the idea of sexual freedom and the fight against AIDS, but that it is impossible to reconcile both of these.

The Metaphysical Club

This book is an excellent portrait of post-protestant, progressive, positivism in the late 19th century. A fascinating study of disembodied faith falling into agnostic secularism.

Below are my thoughts about pragmatism.

Pragmatism: what is it really, and can it be appropriated by Christians?

Names: There are different ‘brands’ of pragmatism; for instance, William James called it pragmatism, John Dewey called it instrumentalism, and others called it humanism. Although each fellow had his own emphasis for the philosophy, there still remains a basic foundational claim common to each.

Foundational claim: At the most basic level, pragmatism purports that human beings 1) act, and only after acting 2) examine the action, determine meaning, and assess utility and/or success of the action. It is worth noting, as Louis Menand himself recognizes, that pragmatism has no logical account for desire or love. The following description is from the Catholic Encyclopedia [my emphasis]:

Pragmatism, as a tendency in philosophy, signifies the insistence on usefulness or practical consequences as a test of truth. In its negative phase, it opposes what it styles the formalism or rationalism of Intellectualistic philosophy. That is, it objects to the view that concepts, judgments, and reasoning processes are representative of reality and the processes of reality. It considers them to be merely symbols, hypotheses and schemata devised by man to facilitate or render possible the use, or experience, of reality. This use, or experience, is the true test of real existence. In its positive phase, therefore, Pragmatism sets up as the standard of truth some non-rational test, such as action, satisfaction of needs, realization in conduct, the possibility of being lived, and judges reality by this norm to the exclusion of all others.

Pragmatism as a ‘system’: Pragmatism may not be a complete philosophical system per se, but it is certainly a foundational account (logia – ideological psychology) of how humans operate – specifically the mind and decision making. This foundational account is hugely important to any direction the philosophy is taken under any name, coloring every aspect of human life: freedom, choice, truth, goodness, civil society, etc.

Assumptions: All forms of pragmatism embrace and assume the following: a) democracy is the best form of civil organization – anti-hierarchical; b) scientific positivism is the future by which man must evaluate himself and his environment – social engineering is assumed via methods such as the law of averages and the bell curve; c) man is always ‘progressing’ and becoming better/smarter; d) pragmatism is anti-institutional, especially old traditional institutions; e) pragmatism rejects all classical, Hellenistic, and scholastic methods of thinking (philosophy and theology) – it also implicitly rejects old creedal formulae (aka: De-Hellenization); f) every ‘problem’ that man now faces was once a ‘solution’ to a previous ‘problem’ (until it was subsequently deemed a ‘problem’). Looming large in the philosophy and the background context of pragmatism is Hegel’s process theology. Process theology asserts that as human history progresses and develops, God also progresses and develops and ‘comes into His being’; this implies that God is ‘mutable’ or changeable as well as ‘passable’ (can suffer). Such claims fly in the face of any orthodox Christian thinking: God is impassible, immutable, omnipotent, and omnipresent; these classic notions of God are garbaged without examining the implications. Although James was the most Christian of the pragmatists found in The Metaphysical Club, the other gentlemen, while denying God or claiming to be agnostic, still viewed ‘reality’ or ‘truth’ as always coming into being and progressing in time. Therefore, man today is automatically further and better developed than man 1,000 years ago.

Why created? The philosophy originated with Charles Pearce, but was taken up and somewhat reappropriated by William James. James intended pragmatism to be a philosophy that once again legitimized the position of God in a progressive, modern, scientific, and rational world; it was an account of reality and how men think which rationalized God in such ‘brave new world’. For the Christian observer, James is probably the one figure for whom to have sympathy, albeit his actions were based in a sort of nostalgia and he fatally sacrificed orthodoxy to make pragmatism ‘work’ (James was guilty of being pragmatic). Pragmatism was also created to legitimize philosophy in a positivistic/scientistic world; abstract thinking was no longer seen as useful or pragmatic as man liberated himself from old institutions and ways of thinking. Philosophy, as seen in pragmatism, came to be dominated by empirical data (law of averages etc.) and the new psychology, and was a hybrid of philosophy undergirded by ‘scientific’ data about human behavior. Pragmatism was also an account that proved to be more useful to control/clean up the messiness of man’s environment/life, and proved itself useful for the rising economic and industrial revolutions. The philosophy was also created as a reaction against the ante-bellum period status quo in America; this is laudable, but only resulted in replacing the former status quo with a new status quo, legitimizing new and destructive western behaviors (scientism, industrialism, abusive capitalism, materialism, Americanism- the manifest destiny of the nation, and social engineering). Pragmatism was also created to help bridge the alleged gap between fides et ratio (faith and reason); such a perceived gap can only come from a Christian fundamentalist backdrop. But such a gap between faith and reason can only be reconnected by the dynamic power of Greco-Roman abstract philosophy, not scientific positivism; ‘scientism’ is simply another form of fundamentalism and maintains the gap between faith and reason.

What are the implications of pragmatism? There are a number of serious problems with pragmatism as well as its implications for the masses. First of all, it implies that human life can be manipulated and predicted according to formulae, averages, and allegedly ‘scientific’ data; social engineering toward creating a worldly utopia is the dangerous result. According to the basic claims of pragmatism, truth is essentially developed and invented by the philosophy as a reaction to the success/failure of human action; every problem is basically the solution to problems prior to it – there is no goal that humans are attempting to reach, no truth to which we strive. Everything as a result is in-flux; there is nothing in society that man can rely upon as a constant, because reality (and/or God) is always constantly coming into being. This has obvious implications for morality: morality becomes a ‘ready, fire, aim’ process; a process that reflects upon action only after the fact. The action itself is arbitrary and subjective, and subsequently the action can be judged subjectively by terms subjectively developed by the actor - moral relativism, plain and simple. One cannot claim truth is not relative, then embrace pragmatism which essentially is creating truth on its own terms all the time; this is a contradiction. Pragmatism, as understood properly, is also deterministic and has the great potential to be oppressive and destroy human love, hope, and freedom. With human life being so predictable and determined, as well as asserting that humans act then assess action, pragmatism can be seen as anti-contemplative; the philosophy is anti-contemplative not because its founders were unintelligent or thoughtless, but because it implies that for the rest of humanity, thinking before acting is not necessary or not the case at all; in fact, it is better if man acts then determines the utility and satisfaction of action after the fact. Lastly, ideas no longer have power unless backed by empirical data; science is the new gospel of truth – yet humans clearly know that science is far from understanding everything about reality, yet it is relied upon in this philosophy to account for everything. Pragmatism is on a larger scale, what Agassiz does with God and his 'science' (it is an irrational fundamentalism): it tries to maintain the status quo of America's ‘manifest destiny’ in the post bellum period - America needs science and industry and progress - and as a result needs a 'philosophy' accounting for human thought and behavior that legitimizes such a mechanistic approach to human life: thus humans do not act before thinking (progress, industry, and the economic machine). As Agassiz is the ‘proto-intelligent design’ fundamentalist, the "Metaphysical Club" (broadly speaking) is a ‘proto-agnostic humanism’ (with some deism) based on anti-institution, democracy, anti-contemplation (as implicated for masses), and the denial human dignity (seeing men as 'averages'.).

Origins & Fruits: Looking at the origins and historical context of pragmatism (disembodied Christian world, post Christian in many ways, positivistic, industrial, progressive, and nationalistic), one can see that it originates in a troubled period. It was forged by agnostics, deists, and Hegelian disciples – this alone breaks any continuity with authentic Christian faith. Looking then at the personal lives of the founders, one can see the ‘fruits’ of such ideology. Charles Pearce is seen as the origin of pragmatism: this makes perfect sense as he was ruled by his appetites, wreaking havoc on everything he touched. James sacrificed, albeit well intentioned, orthodoxy to make pragmatism work. Dewey employed the philosophy in his educational practices: creating schools that ‘developed the child’ through social engineering; education was now about making children into ‘well adjusted’ members of society through scientific methods. Dewey called the philosophy instrumentalism, and his ‘school’ was called the laboratory. Dewey did not desire pragmatism to create individuals, but to make everyone the same – to streamline and ‘perfect’ humanity. Holmes denied human dignity, but insisted on human ‘rights’; he also replaced the language of guilt and sin with the mechanistic terms such as ‘negligence’; this fits well with pragmatism for it allows for the continued re-evaluation of what is true and good. Menand’s work portrays the majority of the ‘transcendalists’ and members of the ‘metaphysical club’ as men who lived scandalous lives, living it up in the ivory towers and high places, and using their influential positions in society to impose their ideology.

Love: Pragmatism does not account for love, and can be seen to destroy or instrumentalize it. Love is a choice; it is the proper ordering of the will (the heart, seat of emotions) by the intellect. The intellect, of course, has to assent to ideas first and be formed by ideals. Love is not based in emotions, but in the choice to give of self and choose the other despite difficulties; the pragmatist claim that man acts before thinking either does not understand this classic and true understanding of how humans operate or it flies in its face (probably the latter). To act without cognition assumes that humans are slaves of their emotions or desires; this is strange and ironic because pragmatism has no clear account of desire. One can logically ask: what then rules human action? Nothing. All is in-flux, and men and women make up truth as they see fit in the context of their existence. Dewey, as Menand asserts, was not for radical individual freedom, but sought to find harmony in the community, but this intention (albeit good) does not work in such a philosophic system. What results is simply a ‘contract society’ (John Stewart Mill – a hedonistic, materialistic society – “life is nasty, brutish, and short.”) where everyone is asserting their will, and as long as no one is bothered or offended the society ‘flourishes’. To examine this more, consider the following example: imagine an infant or toddler – this child operates off the ‘pragmatism’ method of act first, then assess the success/pleasure. The difference between and adult and such a young child is the formation of their intellect, and the process of thinking before acting. Certainly a small child can love his mommy, but if he grows up maintaining love in the same manner (a one-way street, mom does it all), he will really not be able to love another person well as an adult. Love needs to be modeled and trained to children or it will be disordered, negatively affecting the subject and the community; this seems clear ipso facto - just look at our society.

Truth & God: If truth is always in-flux, as pragmatism asserts, then can the pragmatist say that God is Logos? “I am the way, the truth, and the life,” says Christ, the Incarnate Word; “Everyone that is of the truth, heareth my voice.” Such a statement implies that truth is knowable and accessible by the human intellect. Who would deny that the Christian God is the God of Truth? Can man really not know God, nor act from any knowledge of God? What are the 10 Commandments? Is the world God created reflective of the Logos, or not? Or is the world/reality simply the manner in which man describes it, or the name subjectively given (Nominalism)? To the point, here’s what the Wiki page on pragmatism says [my emphasis]:

James and Peirce were inspired by the crucial links among belief, conduct, and disposition by saying a belief is a proposition on which a person is prepared to act. Inspiration for the pragmatists include Francis Bacon who coined the phrase "knowledge is power", David Hume for his naturalistic account of knowledge and action, Thomas Reid for his direct realism, Immanuel Kant for his idealism and from whom Peirce derives the name "pragmatism", Georg Hegel for his introduction of temporality into philosophy (Pinkard in Misak 2007), and J.S. Mill for his nominalism and empiricism.
Concept of truth

Going back to James, in pragmatism spoken truth is not ready-made, but jointly we and reality "make" truth. This idea has two senses, one which is often attributed to William James and F.C.S. Schiller, and another that is more widely accepted in pragmatism: (1) truth is mutable, and (2) truth is relative to a conceptual scheme.

(1) Mutability of truth

One major difference within pragmatism about the definition of 'truth' is the question of whether beliefs can pass from being true to being untrue and back. For James, beliefs are not true until they have been made true by verification. James believed propositions become true over the long term through proving their utility in a person's specific situation. The opposite of this process is not falsification, but rather a belief ceasing to be a "live option." F.C.S. Schiller, on the other hand, very clearly asserted that beliefs could pass into and problems. If I want to know how to return home safely, the true answer will be whatever is useful to solving that problem. Later on, when faced with a different problem, what I came to believe when faced with the earlier problem may now be false. As my problems change and as the most useful way to solve a problem shifts, so does the property of truth.

C.S. Peirce thought the idea that beliefs could be true at one time but false at another (or true for one person but false for another) was one of the "seeds of death"[1] by which James allowed his pragmatism to become "infected." Peirce avoided this position because he took the pragmatic theory to imply that theoretical claims should be tied to verification practices (i.e. they should be subject to test), not that they should be tied to our specific problems or life needs. Truth is defined, for Peirce, as what would be the ultimate outcome (not any outcome in real time) of inquiry by a (usually scientific) community of investigators. John Dewey, while agreeing broadly with this definition, also characterized truthfulness as a species of the good: to state that something is true means stating that it is trustworthy or reliable and will remain so in every conceivable situation. Both Peirce and Dewey clearly connect the definitions of truth and warranted assertability. Hilary Putnam also developed his internal realism around the idea that a belief is true if it is ideally epistemologically justified.

The claims above are problematic on a number of levels for the Christian, most notably the idea that truth is always evolving and changing. The philosophy rejects the Trinity motto: verum, bonum, pulchrum, because man cannot arrive at truth (as Plato says); for the pragmatist, truth is no longer ‘what is’ – that which is absolute, eternal, infinite, good, and beautiful. Ultimately, there is not much of a relationship with God if God is continuously ‘coming into being’; how can man even know himself if God is perpetually in-flux as well? Also, how can man then account for the tragedy and evil of the gas chambers and gulag if history is all part of God’s realization of himself, all things coming into being with the Creator? (cf. Hart, David Bentlely. No Shadow of Turning: on Divine Impassiblility. Pro Ecclesia.) Pragmatism can thus only be seen as intellectual and moral relativism cleverly wrapped up into a positivistic psychology dubbed ‘philosophy’.

Ecumenism? Pragmatism, because of its violent rejection of institutions, hierarchies, traditional creeds, and Hellenistic/scholastic theology/philosophy, as well as its unquestioning embrace of democracy and the mutability of truth, cannot be seen as a groundwork of Christian ecumenism. It formally rejects Catholicism, Orthodoxy, Anglicanism (Episcopal Church), Missouri Synod Lutheranism, Coptic Christianity, et al. that hold faith in their immutable truth claims.

Objections to the above claims: Let us assume that the founders of pragmatism are 'innocent' of any damage and/or negative intentionality; the founders’ ideas still were taken to their logical conclusions by their disciples and the cultural milieu - ideas are dangerous and have consequences (pragmatism was bankrupt, as I describe, from the foundation). Let us assume next that there is something to how humans look back on actions and events and then shape and develop new ideas (as pragmatism asserts with, for instance, the lobster and steak example); this alone cannot be seen as what pragmatism is. All the assumptions (which I addressed above) have to go with the claim. The aforementioned idea can be accounted for in any philosophical system; pragmatism cannot be boiled down to the ‘steak and lobster’ example; humans can and do think before action, even if at times they do not.

Counter Example: The stem cell controversy, I think, is a helpful example. The pragmatist would say: act, act, act. Yet the action to make something practical or useful happen does not in this case. As it turns out, embryonic stem cell research is has produced no major medical breakthroughs. On the other hand, orthodox Christianity, which contemplates first principles of human dignity before acting, has been correct, supporting only the use of adult stems cells. Adult stem cells have produced much medical fruit. This example can be seen to disprove 'pragmatism' in action: morally and practically speaking, it is illogical and bullheaded - it bears the mark of progressive 'scientism' unwilling to consult abstract philosophy and theology.

Conclusion: Based on the overwhelming evidence above, pragmatism, as an account of human thought and action, cannot be appropriated by an authentic Christian orthodoxy in any way.

Obama & the Stem Cell 'Sham'

Morally Unserious in the Extreme
By Charles Krauthammer

WASHINGTON -- Last week, the White House invited me to a signing ceremony overturning the Bush (43) executive order on stem cell research. I assume this was because I have long argued in these columns and during my five years on the President's Council on Bioethics that, contrary to the Bush policy, federal funding should be extended to research on embryonic stem cell lines derived from discarded embryos in fertility clinics.
I declined to attend. Once you show your face at these things you become a tacit endorser of whatever they spring. My caution was vindicated.
Bush had restricted federal funding for embryonic stem cell research to cells derived from embryos that had already been destroyed (as of his speech of Aug. 9, 2001). While I favor moving that moral line to additionally permit the use of spare fertility clinic embryos, Obama replaced it with no line at all. He pointedly left open the creation of cloned -- and noncloned sperm-and-egg-derived -- human embryos solely for the purpose of dismemberment and use for parts.

read the rest...

======================

Stem Cell Sham
The president as sophist.
by P.J. O'Rourke
03/23/2009, Volume 014, Issue 26

When a Democratic president goes from being wrong to being damn wrong is always an interesting moment: Bay of Pigs, Great Society, Jimmy Carter waking up on the morning after his inauguration, HillaryCare. Barack Obama condemned himself (and a number of human embryos to be determined at a later date) on March 9 when he signed an executive order reversing the Bush administration's restrictions on federal funding of stem cell research.
President Obama went to hell not with the stroke of a pen, but with the cluck of a tongue. His executive order was an error. His statement at the executive order signing ceremony was a mortal error: "In recent years, when it comes to stem cell research, rather than furthering discovery, our government has forced what I believe is a false choice between sound science and moral values."
A false choice is no choice at all--Tweedledee/Tweedledum, Chevy Suburban/GMC Yukon XL, Joe Biden/Triumph the Insult Comic Dog. Is there really no difference "between sound science and moral values"? Webster's Third New International Dictionary states that science is, definition one, "possession of knowledge as distinguished from ignorance or misunderstanding."
Let's look at the various things science has "known" in the past 3,000 years.
Lightning is the sneeze of Thor.
The periodic table consists of Earth, Wind, and Fire and a recording of "Got To Get You into My Life."
The world is flat with signs saying "Here Be Democrats" near the edges.
You can turn lead into gold without first selling your Citibank stock at a huge loss.
We're the center of the universe and the Sun revolves around us (and shines out of Uranus, Mr. President, if I may be allowed a moment of utter sophomoricism).

Read the rest...

Cardinal Ruini, summarizing the focus of BXVI's pontificate

Here's the whole piece at Chiesa.

Cardinal Ruini:

The first and greatest priority is God himself, that God who is too easily pushed to the edges of our lives, focused on "doing," especially through "techno-science," and on "enjoyment-consumption." That God is even expressly negated by an evolutionist "metaphysics" that reduces everything to nature, to matter-energy, to chance (random mutations) and to necessity (natural selection), or more often is said to be unknowable according to the principle that "latet omne verum," all truth is hidden, as a result of the restriction of the horizons of our reason to that which can be experienced and measured, according to the view now prevalent. That God, finally, who has been proclaimed "dead," with the assertion of nihilism and the resulting collapse of all certainty.

Benedict's letter to bishops on the SSPX bungle...

This is a letter from a humble shepherd.

Dear Brothers in the Episcopal Ministry!

The remission of the excommunication of the four Bishops consecrated in 1988 by Archbishop Lefebvre without a mandate of the Holy See has for many reasons caused, both within and beyond the Catholic Church, a discussion more heated than any we have seen for a long time. Many Bishops felt perplexed by an event which came about unexpectedly and was difficult to view positively in the light of the issues and tasks facing the Church today. Even though many Bishops and members of the faithful were disposed in principle to take a positive view of the Pope’s concern for reconciliation, the question remained whether such a gesture was fitting in view of the genuinely urgent demands of the life of faith in our time. Some groups, on the other hand, openly accused the Pope of wanting to turn back the clock to before the Council: as a result, an avalanche of protests was unleashed, whose bitterness laid bare wounds deeper than those of the present moment. I therefore feel obliged to offer you, dear Brothers, a word of clarification, which ought to help you understand the concerns which led me and the competent offices of the Holy See to take this step. In this way I hope to contribute to peace in the Church.

An unforeseen mishap for me was the fact that the Williamson case came on top of the remission of the excommunication. The discreet gesture of mercy towards four Bishops ordained validly but not legitimately suddenly appeared as something completely different: as the repudiation of reconciliation between Christians and Jews, and thus as the reversal of what the Council had laid down in this regard to guide the Church’s path. A gesture of reconciliation with an ecclesial group engaged in a process of separation thus turned into its very antithesis: an apparent step backwards with regard to all the steps of reconciliation between Christians and Jews taken since the Council -- steps which my own work as a theologian had sought from the beginning to take part in and support. That this overlapping of two opposed processes took place and momentarily upset peace between Christians and Jews, as well as peace within the Church, is something which I can only deeply deplore. I have been told that consulting the information available on the internet would have made it possible to perceive the problem early on. I have learned the lesson that in the future in the Holy See we will have to pay greater attention to that source of news. I was saddened by the fact that even Catholics who, after all, might have had a better knowledge of the situation, thought they had to attack me with open hostility. Precisely for this reason I thank all the more our Jewish friends, who quickly helped to clear up the misunderstanding and to restore the atmosphere of friendship and trust which -- as in the days of Pope John Paul II -- has also existed throughout my pontificate and, thank God, continues to exist.

Another mistake, which I deeply regret, is the fact that the extent and limits of the provision of 21 January 2009 were not clearly and adequately explained at the moment of its publication. The excommunication affects individuals, not institutions. An episcopal ordination lacking a pontifical mandate raises the danger of a schism, since it jeopardizes the unity of the College of Bishops with the Pope. Consequently the Church must react by employing her most severe punishment -- excommunication -- with the aim of calling those thus punished to repent and to return to unity. Twenty years after the ordinations, this goal has sadly not yet been attained. The remission of the excommunication has the same aim as that of the punishment: namely, to invite the four Bishops once more to return. This gesture was possible once the interested parties had expressed their recognition in principle of the Pope and his authority as Pastor, albeit with some reservations in the area of obedience to his doctrinal authority and to the authority of the Council. Here I return to the distinction between individuals and institutions. The remission of the excommunication was a measure taken in the field of ecclesiastical discipline: the individuals were freed from the burden of conscience constituted by the most serious of ecclesiastical penalties. This disciplinary level needs to be distinguished from the doctrinal level. The fact that the Society of Saint Pius X does not possess a canonical status in the Church is not, in the end, based on disciplinary but on doctrinal reasons. As long as the Society does not have a canonical status in the Church, its ministers do not exercise legitimate ministries in the Church. There needs to be a distinction, then, between the disciplinary level, which deals with individuals as such, and the doctrinal level, at which ministry and institution are involved. In order to make this clear once again: until the doctrinal questions are clarified, the Society has no canonical status in the Church, and its ministers -- even though they have been freed of the ecclesiastical penalty -- do not legitimately exercise any ministry in the Church.

In light of this situation, it is my intention henceforth to join the Pontifical Commission "Ecclesia Dei" -- the body which has been competent since 1988 for those communities and persons who, coming from the Society of Saint Pius X or from similar groups, wish to return to full communion with the Pope -- to the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. This will make it clear that the problems now to be addressed are essentially doctrinal in nature and concern primarily the acceptance of the Second Vatican Council and the post-conciliar magisterium of the Popes. The collegial bodies with which the Congregation studies questions which arise (especially the ordinary Wednesday meeting of Cardinals and the annual or biennial Plenary Session) ensure the involvement of the Prefects of the different Roman Congregations and representatives from the world’s Bishops in the process of decision-making. The Church’s teaching authority cannot be frozen in the year 1962 -- this must be quite clear to the Society. But some of those who put themselves forward as great defenders of the Council also need to be reminded that Vatican II embraces the entire doctrinal history of the Church. Anyone who wishes to be obedient to the Council has to accept the faith professed over the centuries, and cannot sever the roots from which the tree draws its life. [hahahahaha!]

I hope, dear Brothers, that this serves to clarify the positive significance and also the limits of the provision of 21 January 2009. But the question still remains: Was this measure needed? Was it really a priority? Aren’t other things perhaps more important? Of course there are more important and urgent matters. I believe that I set forth clearly the priorities of my pontificate in the addresses which I gave at its beginning. Everything that I said then continues unchanged as my plan of action. The first priority for the Successor of Peter was laid down by the Lord in the Upper Room in the clearest of terms: "You… strengthen your brothers" (Lk 22:32). Peter himself formulated this priority anew in his first Letter: "Always be prepared to make a defence to anyone who calls you to account for the hope that is in you" (1 Pet 3:15). In our days, when in vast areas of the world the faith is in danger of dying out like a flame which no longer has fuel, the overriding priority is to make God present in this world and to show men and women the way to God. Not just any god, but the God who spoke on Sinai; to that God whose face we recognize in a love which presses "to the end" (cf. Jn 13:1) -- in Jesus Christ, crucified and risen. The real problem at this moment of our history is that God is disappearing from the human horizon, and, with the dimming of the light which comes from God, humanity is losing its bearings, with increasingly evident destructive effects.

Leading men and women to God, to the God who speaks in the Bible: this is the supreme and fundamental priority of the Church and of the Successor of Peter at the present time. A logical consequence of this is that we must have at heart the unity of all believers. Their disunity, their disagreement among themselves, calls into question the credibility of their talk of God. Hence the effort to promote a common witness by Christians to their faith -- ecumenism -- is part of the supreme priority. Added to this is the need for all those who believe in God to join in seeking peace, to attempt to draw closer to one another, and to journey together, even with their differing images of God, towards the source of Light -- this is interreligious dialogue. Whoever proclaims that God is Love "to the end" has to bear witness to love: in loving devotion to the suffering, in the rejection of hatred and enmity -- this is the social dimension of the Christian faith, of which I spoke in the Encyclical Deus Caritas Est.

So if the arduous task of working for faith, hope and love in the world is presently (and, in various ways, always) the Church’s real priority, then part of this is also made up of acts of reconciliation, small and not so small. That the quiet gesture of extending a hand gave rise to a huge uproar, and thus became exactly the opposite of a gesture of reconciliation, is a fact which we must accept. But I ask now: Was it, and is it, truly wrong in this case to meet half-way the brother who "has something against you" (cf. Mt 5:23ff.) and to seek reconciliation? Should not civil society also try to forestall forms of extremism and to incorporate their eventual adherents -- to the extent possible -- in the great currents shaping social life, and thus avoid their being segregated, with all its consequences? Can it be completely mistaken to work to break down obstinacy and narrowness, and to make space for what is positive and retrievable for the whole? I myself saw, in the years after 1988, how the return of communities which had been separated from Rome changed their interior attitudes; I saw how returning to the bigger and broader Church enabled them to move beyond one-sided positions and broke down rigidity so that positive energies could emerge for the whole. Can we be totally indifferent about a community which has 491 priests, 215 seminarians, 6 seminaries, 88 schools, 2 university-level institutes, 117 religious brothers, 164 religious sisters and thousands of lay faithful? Should we casually let them drift farther from the Church? I think for example of the 491 priests. We cannot know how mixed their motives may be. All the same, I do not think that they would have chosen the priesthood if, alongside various distorted and unhealthy elements, they did not have a love for Christ and a desire to proclaim him and, with him, the living God. Can we simply exclude them, as representatives of a radical fringe, from our pursuit of reconciliation and unity? What would then become of them?

Certainly, for some time now, and once again on this specific occasion, we have heard from some representatives of that community many unpleasant things -- arrogance and presumptuousness, an obsession with one-sided positions, etc. Yet to tell the truth, I must add that I have also received a number of touching testimonials of gratitude which clearly showed an openness of heart. But should not the great Church also allow herself to be generous in the knowledge of her great breadth, in the knowledge of the promise made to her? Should not we, as good educators, also be capable of overlooking various faults and making every effort to open up broader vistas? And should we not admit that some unpleasant things have also emerged in Church circles? At times one gets the impression that our society needs to have at least one group to which no tolerance may be shown; which one can easily attack and hate. And should someone dare to approach them -- in this case the Pope -- he too loses any right to tolerance; he too can be treated hatefully, without misgiving or restraint. [Boom.]

Dear Brothers, during the days when I first had the idea of writing this letter, by chance, during a visit to the Roman Seminary, I had to interpret and comment on Galatians 5:13-15. I was surprised at the directness with which that passage speaks to us about the present moment: "Do not use your freedom as an opportunity for the flesh, but through love be servants of one another. For the whole law is fulfilled in one word: ‘You shall love your neighbour as yourself’. But if you bite and devour one another, take heed that you are not consumed by one another." I am always tempted to see these words as another of the rhetorical excesses which we occasionally find in Saint Paul. To some extent that may also be the case. But sad to say, this "biting and devouring" also exists in the Church today, as expression of a poorly understood freedom. Should we be surprised that we too are no better than the Galatians? That at the very least we are threatened by the same temptations? That we must always learn anew the proper use of freedom? And that we must always learn anew the supreme priority, which is love? The day I spoke about this at the Major Seminary, the feast of Our Lady of Trust was being celebrated in Rome. And so it is: Mary teaches us trust. She leads us to her Son, in whom all of us can put our trust. He will be our guide -- even in turbulent times. And so I would like to offer heartfelt thanks to all the many Bishops who have lately offered me touching tokens of trust and affection, and above all assured me of their prayers. My thanks also go to all the faithful who in these days have given me testimony of their constant fidelity to the Successor of Saint Peter. May the Lord protect all of us and guide our steps along the way of peace. This is the prayer that rises up instinctively from my heart at the beginning of this Lent, a liturgical season particularly suited to interior purification, one which invites all of us to look with renewed hope to the light which awaits us at Easter.

With a special Apostolic Blessing, I remain

Yours in the Lord,

BENEDICTUS PP. XVI

From the Vatican, 10 March 2009

Vatican offers Lenten music

Check it out here.

Cramer takes on White House, John Stewart, and Frank Rich

Suddenly, bloggers, opinion people, columnists and, yes, pundits who haven't paid attention to anything I have been saying or writing for the past 18 months are all over me. Suddenly, I find myself in the center of a firestorm over Obama's economic policies, taking enfilading fire from the "liberal" media (from serious columnist Frank Rich to entertainer Jon Stewart) while being defended by Rush Limbaugh, the standard-bearer for the Republicans.

I'm uncomfortable being in the crosshairs of columnists and comedians I enjoy, and I find the embrace of Rush Limbaugh most certainly strange if not antithetical to many of my viewpoints.

Interesting, read the rest.

An interesting article by Mike Aquilina on Rodney Stark's book.

A Double Take on Early Christianity
MIKE AQUILINA

Tracking the growth of Christianity 2,000 years ago is an ambitious undertaking for a sociologist. But Rodney Stark found it irresistible. Reading recent histories of early Christianity, he began to do some number-crunching. Soon, he says, it was a consuming "hobby." And, before long, he had written a best-selling book, The Rise of Christianity.

What he found in his study of the first Christian centuries was an astonishing growth rate in the number of Christians of 40 percent per decade. From a small band of twelve, the Church had grown to 6 million people by 300 A.D. Stark maintains that the Emperor Constantine did not so much ensure Christianity's success as acknowledge it. Constantine's edict of toleration in 313 was overdue recognition that the Church had already won the empire.

But Stark is most interested in how the West was won. Contrary to pious histories, he holds that most growth came from individual conversions, and from the merchant and upper classes rather than the poor. Contrary to secular feminist pieties, he makes the case that most converts were women, that women benefited greatly from conversion, and that women were leaders in the early Church.

He also shows the remarkable effects of charity on Church growth. Christians, he demonstrates, were much more likely to survive epidemics because they cared for one another. And the pagans who received Christian care were much more likely to become Christians. In times of epidemic, Stark says, pagan priests and doctors were among the first to leave town.

Stark's book vividly describes the misery of ordinary citizens of the pagan world. Most lived in cramped, smoky tenements with no ventilation or plumbing. Life expectancy was around 30 years for men and perhaps much lower for women. Hygiene was minimal. Medical care was more dangerous than disease, and disease often left its victims disfigured or dead. The human body was host to countless parasites, and tenements were infested by pests. For entertainment, people thronged to the circuses to see other people mutilated and killed.

Read the rest here.

The President Politicizes Stem Cell Research

By ROBERT P. GEORGE and ERIC COHEN

Yesterday President Barack Obama issued an executive order that authorizes expanded federal funding for research using stem cells produced by destroying human embryos. The announcement was classic Obama: advancing radical policies while seeming calm and moderate, and preaching the gospel of civility while accusing those who disagree with the policies of being "divisive" and even "politicizing science."

Mr. Obama's executive order overturned an attempt by President George W. Bush in 2001 to do justice to both the promise of stem-cell science and the demands of ethics. The Bush policy was to allow the government to fund research on existing embryonic stem-cell lines, where the embryos in question had already been destroyed. But it would not fund, or in any way incentivize, the ongoing destruction of human embryos.

For years, this policy was attacked by advocates of embryo-destructive research. Mr. Bush and the "religious right" were depicted as antiscience villains and embryonic stem-cell scientists and their allies were seen as the beleaguered saviors of the sick. In reality, Mr. Bush's policy was one of moderation. It did not ban new embryo-destructive research (the president had no power to do that), and it did not fund new embryo-destructive research.

"Moderate" Mr. Obama's policy is not. It will promote a whole new industry of embryo creation and destruction, including the creation of human embryos by cloning for research in which they are destroyed. It forces American taxpayers, including those who see the deliberate taking of human life in the embryonic stage as profoundly unjust, to be complicit in this practice.

Mr. Obama made a big point in his speech of claiming to bring integrity back to science policy, and his desire to remove the previous administration's ideological agenda from scientific decision-making. This claim of taking science out of politics is false and misguided on two counts.

Here's the rest.

The Anti-Newman Cardinal

The cardinal's coat of arms symbolizes his angle: the anti-Syllabus of Errors: Gaudium et Spes.

Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O’Connor delivered a lecture on the last 150 years of Catholicism in England... here's an excerpt:

Cardinal Heenan generally backed reform, but was often undermined by events. The defection of many priests at that time pained him greatly and the reaffirmation of the traditional teaching on contraception in the Encyclical Humanae Vitae (doc) caused him much anguish and trouble. The years of his Episcopate and, indeed, the long tenure of his successor Cardinal Basil Hume, found a Catholic Church in a very curious state. It could no longer claim in the old sense that its purpose was the conversion of England because it could not ignore the fact that we were now committed to serious ecumenical dialogue with fellow Christians and, in particular, the Church of England and the Church in Wales. The recognition of common baptism, Ecumenical sensitivity and an understanding of the fullness of unity which was still to be attained was part of the teaching of the Vatican Council and could not be ignored. Even more so the slogan, ‘keep the faith’, did not have quite the same ring about it. Cardinal Hume managed in his own persona to suggest that Catholicism was part of English life. He himself became, as it were, almost a part of the Establishment. His period of office for the Catholic Church had been a high profile one in public life, much of it due to his own outstanding witness.

Not so confident Cardinal Newman would be pleased.

The liberals want to sell out the Church to the modern world.

Here is a story, and a link to the entire piece.

A Person to Person movement?

There are some interesting ideas here; I am not totally convinced that the 'institution' aspect hurts the Church and that Constantine screwed it all up. At any rate, the following is thought-provoking:

From the following blog: "Ten Reasons: the observations of a seditious catechist"

In a fascinating, recently made-available interview with Mike Aquilina, historian and sociologist Rodney Stark shows what really made the early Church grow and thrive:

You also argue for steady growth by individual conversions rather than by mass conversions. Why?

RS: We don't have a single documented case of mass conversion. Yes, there's the passage in the Book of Acts, and I'm not one of these people who say, "Don't trust the Bible." But you've got to understand what people meant by numbers in those times. Numbers were rhetorical exercises. You'd say a million when you really meant a hundred. What you're really saying is "lots." In Acts, I think the numbers are meant to say, "Look, wonderful things are happening." If the historical demographers are right, Jerusalem had about 25,000 people in it at the time. So if you start talking about eight or ten thousand converts, that's a little bit out of scale.

What about forced conversions?

RS: There weren't any in the time I'm talking about. Constantine didn't cause the triumph of Christianity. He rode off it. In fact, I'll go so far as to say he had many harmful effects. I don't believe establishment is good for churches. It gets them involved in the worldly realm in ways that are unsuitable and corrupting. By the end of Constantine's reign, we see people competing madly to become bishops because of the money. After that, Christianity was no longer a person-to-person movement.

Emperor Constantine did not so much ensure Christianity's success as acknowledge it. Constantine's edict of toleration in 313 was overdue recognition that the Church had already won the empire.

You look at the spread of Christianity beyond the empire, and you see that it was almost entirely by treaty and by baptizing kings. I think one reason medieval church attendance was so bad in Scandinavia and Germany was that these people weren't really Christians. If it hadn't been for the establishment of the Church, they might have been. Their lands would have become Christian because many people would have gone door-to-door to make Christians out of them -- and then baptized the king. It was bad for the Church. I think the current pope would agree with me; I think most medieval popes would have me burned for saying this.

American Catholics can understand it, though. They know how good it was for the Church to have to fight for its life in the United States. The old Protestant story was that the priest met the boat, and you had another boatload of Catholics. But that's not true; those people weren't used to going to church or contributing money. They had to be turned into Catholics. It was a remarkable feat. Posed with a challenge, the Church rose to it very well, and the American Church became a very strong Church, compared to the Latin American Church.

The received tradition is that many Christians were martyred. Yet you say that blood witnesses were few.

RS: There's a consensus among historians that the numbers weren't large at all, and that we may know the name of just about every single martyr. The Romans decided to attack the movement from the top. This would have worked with other religions because there was no bottom to paganism. Paganism was really temples on a shopping mall, and people were very casual about which ones they patronized. If the Romans knocked off the chief priest and took away government subsidy, a pagan temple would fold up.

So the empire went after Christianity the same way, thinking, "If we butcher the bishops, things will take care of themselves." Of course, it didn't work because there were 92 guys waiting in line to be bishop. That's what you get with a mass movement.

What was true then -- and true centuries later on this continent -- is still true now: Christianity is fundamentally a person-to-person movement. Studies of converts bear this out as well. While they often cite core doctrines like the Eucharist, papal authority, or the defense of human life, converts just as often tell you it was because of a person that they became Catholic. One of the tragedies of Vatican II's flawed implementation is that it clericalized the laity, convincing them that their vocation was in and around the sanctuary, where they work amongst themselves and compete with the clergy, instead of out in the world, where they can evangelize and build a civilization of love. You can read Mike Aquilina's 36-page history of the early Church for the Knights of Columbus here.

Obama quietly moves to de-regulate abortion...

In sum:

hite House quietly announced on Friday that President Barack Obama is starting the process of overturning protections President Bush put in place to make sure medical staff and centers are not forced to do abortions. The move is the latest that will add to Obama's growing pro-abortion record.

Existing federal laws already make it so doctors and hospitals are not required to perform abortions. Because those laws aren't always followed, the Bush administration added additional protections.

Now, the Obama administration is Starting the process to remove them.

See this story...

and this story...

and this story about the Mexico City debacle.

Former Senator Rick Santorum gets it...

From a recent op-ed piece in a Philadelphia paper:

...Sadly, the church hierarchy has been less assertive when public figures' policy positions openly dissent from core teachings.

That's why Scranton Bishop Joseph Martino got so much national attention last fall. Martino, formerly the auxiliary bishop of Philadelphia, made the welcome decision to publicly bar then Sen. Joe Biden and other abortion advocates from receiving Communion in the Scranton Diocese. Then, after the November election, he admonished his brother bishops for their reluctance to deal with the issue faithfully.

Last month, Martino took on the most influential family in his diocese, the Caseys. He excoriated Sen. Bob Casey, who claims to be pro-life, for voting to give taxpayer dollars to overseas organizations that perform abortions. He warned that Casey was "formally cooperating with evil."

Martino was not done. Two weeks ago, the Philadelphia native and St. Joseph's Prep graduate issued a strong statement of disapproval to a local, nominally Catholic college, Misericordia University, that had scheduled a speech on campus by someone advocating same-sex marriage. "The faithful of the Diocese of Scranton should be in no doubt," Martino said, "that Misericordia University in this instance is seriously failing in maintaining its Catholic identity."

Then, last week, Martino took on some more of the biggest guns in the diocese: the Irish clubs that organize the largest public Catholic event of the year, the St. Patrick's Day festivities. Through a letter from his Irish auxiliary bishop, Martino warned that if any of these groups went ahead with plans that in any way honor politicians who are not pro-life, he would close the cathedral where Mass is usually held prior to the parade, as well as other diocesan churches. He said he would not countenance anything that created confusion about the teachings of the church.

The reason for the letter: Scranton's St. Patrick's Day parade last year featured Hillary Clinton.

Many of his brother bishops will look at Martino as they do at other uncompromising defenders of the faith, worrying about the world's reaction. As a Philly guy, though, his excellency knows something about being booed. He also knows his job and calling: to be the good shepherd who faithfully leads and protects his flock from those who would lead them astray.

Yes, scores of people are reportedly protesting and threatening to leave the church. In the end, however, people leaving the church because of a bishop who enforces its teachings are a blessing compared with the alternative: people leaving because bishops and their priests don't teach, much less enforce, those teachings.

Amen, brother!

The media and the left - drumming up hatred in the name of 'tolerance'

Ash Wednesday 2009

Ash Wednesday

Today the Church celebrates : St Ethelbert of Kent

Book of Joel 2,12-18.

Yet even now, says the LORD, return to me with your whole heart, with fasting, and weeping, and mourning; Rend your hearts, not your garments, and return to the LORD, your God. For gracious and merciful is he, slow to anger, rich in kindness, and relenting in punishment. Perhaps he will again relent and leave behind him a blessing, Offerings and libations for the LORD, your God. Blow the trumpet in Zion! proclaim a fast, call an assembly; Gather the people, notify the congregation; Assemble the elders, gather the children and the infants at the breast; Let the bridegroom quit his room, and the bride her chamber. Between the porch and the altar let the priests, the ministers of the LORD, weep, And say, "Spare, O LORD, your people, and make not your heritage a reproach, with the nations ruling over them! Why should they say among the peoples, 'Where is their God?'" Then the LORD was stirred to concern for his land and took pity on his people.

Psalms 51(50),3-4.5-6.12-13.14.17.

Have mercy on me, God, in your goodness; in your abundant compassion blot out my offense.
Wash away all my guilt; from my sin cleanse me.
For I know my offense; my sin is always before me.
Against you alone have I sinned; I have done such evil in your sight That you are just in your sentence, blameless when you condemn.
A clean heart create for me, God; renew in me a steadfast spirit.
Do not drive me from your presence, nor take from me your holy spirit.
Restore my joy in your salvation; sustain in me a willing spirit.
Lord, open my lips; my mouth will proclaim your praise.

Second Letter to the Corinthians 5,20-21.6,1-2.

So we are ambassadors for Christ, as if God were appealing through us. We implore you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God. For our sake he made him to be sin who did not know sin, so that we might become the righteousness of God in him. Working together, then, we appeal to you not to receive the grace of God in vain. For he says: "In an acceptable time I heard you, and on the day of salvation I helped you." Behold, now is a very acceptable time; behold, now is the day of salvation.

Holy Gospel of Jesus Christ according to Saint Matthew 6,1-6.16-18.

(But) take care not to perform righteous deeds in order that people may see them; otherwise, you will have no recompense from your heavenly Father. When you give alms, do not blow a trumpet before you, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and in the streets to win the praise of others. Amen, I say to you, they have received their reward. But when you give alms, do not let your left hand know what your right is doing, so that your almsgiving may be secret. And your Father who sees in secret will repay you. When you pray, do not be like the hypocrites, who love to stand and pray in the synagogues and on street corners so that others may see them. Amen, I say to you, they have received their reward. But when you pray, go to your inner room, close the door, and pray to your Father in secret. And your Father who sees in secret will repay you. When you fast, do not look gloomy like the hypocrites. They neglect their appearance, so that they may appear to others to be fasting. Amen, I say to you, they have received their reward. But when you fast, anoint your head and wash your face, so that you may not appear to be fasting, except to your Father who is hidden. And your Father who sees what is hidden will repay you.

Commentary of the day :

Pope Benedict XVI
General Audience 06/02/08 (© copyright Libreria Editrice Vaticana)

In the primitive Church at the outset Lent was the privileged time for preparing catechumens to receive the sacraments of Baptism and the Eucharist, which were celebrated at the Easter Vigil. Lent was considered as the period in which to become a Christian which was not brought about in an instant but required a long journey of conversion and renewal. The baptized also joined in this preparation, reviving the memory of the Sacrament they had received with renewed communion with Christ, available to them at the joyful celebration of Easter. Thus, Lent had and still has today preserved the character of a baptismal process in the sense that it helps keep alive the awareness that being Christians is always achieved by becoming Christians over and over again: it is never a story that is over once and for all but rather a journey which requires us to start out constantly anew.

As he places the Ashes on the person's forehead the celebrant says "Remember you are dust, and to dust you shall return" (cf. Gn 3: 19), or he repeats Jesus' exhortation "Repent, and believe in the Gospel" (cf. Mk 1: 15). Both formulas are a reminder of the truth about human life: we are limited creatures, sinners always in need of repentance and conversion. How important it is to listen to and accept this reminder in our time! When contemporary man proclaims his total autonomy from God, he enslaves himself and often finds himself in comfortless loneliness. The invitation to conversion, therefore, is an incentive to return to the embrace of God, the tender and merciful Father, to entrust oneself to him, to entrust oneself to him as adoptive sons, regenerated by his love... Therefore, to convert is to let oneself be won over by Jesus (cf. Phil 3: 12) and "to return" with him to the Father. Conversion thus entails placing oneself humbly at the school of Jesus and walking meekly in his footsteps.

2 Cardinals on the dangers of secularism

From Chiesa.

Catholics, secularists, and civil society

by Angelo Scola


"The West must decide to understand what influence faith has in the public life of its citizens, it cannot dismiss the problem."

These scorching words, spoken by a Middle Eastern bishop in Amman during the international scholarly conference of the magazine "Oasis," are coming back to my mind in these days, during which a lively debate has been ignited in the media about the activity of Christians in civil society, the dialogue between secularists and Catholics – which, according to some, has reached the end of the line – the presumed defeat of Christianity, and the interference by churchmen in public affairs. In a word, about the manner in which Catholics should or should not address delicate issues of public life, like those of bioethics.

It seems to me that people often lose sight of the heart of the matter: every faith must always be subjected to a public cultural interpretation. It is an inevitable fact. On the one hand, this is because, as John Paul II wrote, "a faith that did not become cultural would not be fully welcomed, not entirely thought out, not faithfully lived." On the other, since the faith – Jewish and Christian – is the result of God's compromise with history, it inevitably has to do with the concreteness of life and death, of love and pain, of work and rest, and of civic action. For this reason, it is inevitably the object of different cultural interpretations, which can be in conflict with each other.

In this phase of "post-secularism," there are two cultural interpretations of Christianity in particular that are at odds with each other. Both seem reductive to me.

The first is the one that treats Christianity as a civil religion, as mere ethical cement, capable of acting as a social adhesive for our democracy and for the European democracies in grave distress. If such a position is plausible in those who do not believe, its structural insufficiency should be evident to those who do believe.

The other, more subtle interpretation is the one that tends to reduce Christianity to the proclamation of the pure, unadorned Cross, for the salvation of "everyone else."

For example, getting involved with bioethics or biopolitics is seen as detracting from Christ's authentic message of mercy, as if this message were in itself ahistorical, without any anthropological, social, and cosmological implications. Such an attitude produces a dispersion, a diaspora of Christians in society, and ends up concealing the human relevance of the faith as such. To such an extent that in the face of life's crises, including public ones, a silence is demanded that risks making adherence to Christ and to the Church meaningless in the eyes of others.

In my view, neither of these two cultural interpretations succeeds in expressing adequately the true nature of Christianity and its activity in social society: the first because it reduces this to its secular dimension, separating it from its specifically Christian dynamism, the gift of an encounter with the personal coming of Christ in the Church; the second because it deprives the faith of its concrete embodiment.

There is another cultural interpretation that to me seems more respectful of the nature of man and his being in relationship. This runs along the ridge that separates civil religion from diaspora and concealment. It presents the coming of Jesus Christ in its entirety – incapable of being reduced to any human federation – and displays the heart of this, which lives in the Church's faith on behalf of all people.

In what way? Through the Church's proclamation of all the mysteries of faith in their entirety, as skillfully compiled in the catechism.

But this leads to the need to explain all of the aspects and implications that always arise from these mysteries. These are interwoven with human affairs in every age, demonstrating the beauty and fecundity of the faith for everyday life.

Just one example: if I believe that man is created in the image and likeness of God, I will have a certain understanding of birth and death, of the relationship between man and woman, of marriage and the family. This understanding inevitably encounters and seeks an exchange with the experience of all men, including nonbelievers. Regardless of their manner of understanding these basic elements of existence.

While respecting the specific responsibility of the lay faithful in the political domain, it is nonetheless evident that if every member of the faithful, from the pope to the last of the baptized, were not to share openly what he believes are the valid answers to the questions that trouble the human heart every day, and bear witness to the practical implications of his own faith, he would take something away from others. He would withhold a positive contribution, he would not participate in the common effort to build up the good life.

And today, in a society that is pluralistic and therefore has a tendency to be highly conflictual, this exchange must extend 360 degrees, to everyone, no one excluded.

In such an encounter, in which Christians, including the pope and bishops, dialogue humbly but firmly with everyone, it can be seen that the action of the Church is not aimed at hegemony, in using the ideal of faith for the sake of power. Its real aim, in imitation of its Founder, is that of offering everyone the consolation of hope in eternal life. This hope can already be enjoyed in the "hundredfold here below,"and helps us to face the crucial problems that make everyone's daily life fascinating and dramatic.

It is only through this untiring testimony, aimed at mutual recognition and respectful of the procedures ratified under the rule of law, that the great practical value unleashed by the fact of living together can be made to bear fruit.

__________


Secularism and the common good

by Camillo Ruini


Reflecting on secularism in relation to the common good seems to me to be a fundamental and somewhat stimulating approach to understanding and appreciating secularism, and in particular for discerning and evaluating the various and very different meanings that the concept of secularism has taken on.

But in order to do this, we must first of all get as clear and specific an idea as possible of the meaning of the expression "common good," in the light of which we will seek to discover the foundations and functions of secularism.

As is well known, "common good" is a typical – if not exclusive – concept of Catholic social thought. It therefore seems proper to refer to the meaning that the term is given in this context. The "Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church," published in 2004 by the pontifical council for justice and peace, considers the common good as the first of the principles of this doctrine, deriving it "from the dignity, unity and equality of all people."

It first of all indicates "the sum total of social conditions which allow people, either as groups or as individuals, to reach their fulfilment more fully and more easily." In concrete terms, the common good is "the good of all people and of the whole person," since "the human person cannot find fulfilment in himself, that is, apart from the fact that he exists 'with' others and 'for' others."

The common good, therefore, "does not consist in the simple sum of the particular goods of each subject of a social entity. Belonging to everyone and to each person, it is and remains 'common', because it is indivisible and because only together is it possible to attain it, increase it and safeguard its effectiveness, with regard also to the future." Although it is thus founded in the nature and dignity of our being, the common good also has a clear historical dimension: in fact, "the demands of the common good are dependent on the social conditions of each historical period and are strictly connected to respect for and the integral promotion of the person and his fundamental rights" ("Compendium, nn. 164-166).

It is not possible, and perhaps it would not even be useful for our purposes, to dispose of such a clear and organic determination of the concept of secularism. But an initial clarification, unnecessary in English, is indispensable for the Italian term "laicità," which can refer either to political secularism or to the non-clerical dimension of the Church. In this context, we are not speaking of "laicità" in the theological and ecclesial sense, concerning which Vatican Council II says in "Lumen Gentium" (no. 31): "The term laity is here understood to mean all the faithful except those in holy orders and those in the state of religious life... these faithful are by baptism made one body with Christ and are constituted among the People of God... and they carry out for their own part the mission of the whole Christian people in the Church and in the world. What specifically characterizes the laity is their secular nature... the laity, by their very vocation, seek the kingdom of God by engaging in temporal affairs and by ordering them according to the plan of God."

This secular nature and the relationship with temporal realities constitute, in a certain way, the bridge that permits a connection and passage to the other major meaning of the terms "laici" and "laicità" [political secularism], which is the one to which we will refer from now on. Here, secular and secularism are, in fact, concepts that indicate and imply an autonomy and distinction from that which is ecclesiastical, from that which refers to the Church, and more broadly to Christianity and religion in general. Still fundamental for understanding the origin of this concept is the comprehensive study by G. de Lagarde "La naissance de l'esprit laïque, au déclin du moyen âge".

Indicative of the plurality and also of the contrast of interpretations given to this concept today is the way in which Giovanni Fornero, in the third edition of Nicola Abbagnano's "Dizionario di filosofia" (which Fornero himself edited), treats the entry "Laicismo," which in ordinary expression indicates a rigid, polemical, and "exclusive" version of secularism. For Fornero, "laicismo" means "the principle of the autonomy of human activities, meaning the demand that these activities be undertaken according to their own rules, that they not be imposed from the outside, for purposes or interests different from those that inspire them."

But this autonomy is affirmed, in terms that are formally rather similar, by Vatican Council II ("Gaudium et Spes, no. 36), which states: "If by the autonomy of earthly affairs we mean that created things and societies themselves enjoy their own laws and values which must be gradually deciphered, put to use, and regulated by men, then it is entirely right to demand that autonomy. Such is not merely required by modern man, but harmonizes also with the will of the Creator. For by the very circumstance of their having been created, all things are endowed with their own stability, truth, goodness, proper laws and order. Man must respect these as he isolates them by the appropriate methods of the individual sciences or arts."

It is also rather interesting that Fornero traces back the origin of the concept of secularism to Pope Gelasius I, who, at the end of the fifth century, clearly formulated the principle of the distinction between the two powers of the pope and the emperor, and on this basis asserted the autonomy of the religious sphere from that of politics. And then-cardinal Joseph Ratzinger expressed himself in similar terms in the book "Without Roots" (pp. 56-57), identifying here as well the origin of a profound difference between Christianity in the West and the East, between Catholicism and Orthodoxy, in which the emperor was also the head of the Church, which appeared to be almost equated with the empire.

* * *

But this convergence, or agreement, on the principle of secularism cannot conceal the divergences that have formed throughout history, and continue to reemerge today. The decisive shift was the "new schism" – to use the words of Cardinal Ratzinger in the book already cited (p. 63) – that was seen above all in France between the end of the 18th and beginning of the 19th century, and is still typical especially of the Latin countries of Catholic tradition.

It was here that the defense of reason and freedom asserted with the Enlightenment took on a face that was decisively hostile toward the Church, and, not infrequently, closed to any form of transcendence, while for its part the Church struggled and stalled for a long time in distinguishing between the anti-Christian claims that it clearly could not refrain from opposing, and the defense of social and political freedom which, instead, it could and must accept positively. The "new schism" was therefore between Catholics and "secularists," where the word "secular" took on a meaning of opposition to religion that it did not have before.

It is interesting to note that a similar schism was not seen in the Protestant world, because Protestantism, which from the beginning had understood itself as a movement of liberation and purification from the bonds of ecclesiastical authority, easily developed a kinship with Enlightenment thinking, but with the risk – and sometimes not only the risk – of undermining Christian truth from within and reducing it to an element of culture, rather than of faith in the authentic sense.

The terrain that was immediately the most sensitive – although, in my view, not the most profound – to tensions between Christianity and Enlightenment philosophy was that of relations between Church and state. And here a second and extremely important convergence developed, above all within the Protestant world.

While in Europe the Churches that emerged from the Reformation were constituted as state Churches in a manner that was much more significant than in the case of Catholicism, where the state Churches always had to come to terms with the unity and transnational universality of the Catholic Church, it was entirely different in the United States of America. The country's very origin, in fact, was due to a large extent to those groups of Protestant Christians who had fled from the system of state Churches in Europe, and formed free communities of believers.

The foundation of American society was therefore laid by the free Churches, for which it was essential not to be state Churches, but be founded on the free association of believers. In this sense, it can be said that at the basis of American society is a separation between Church and state that is determined, even demanded by religion and aimed above all at protecting religion itself and its living space, which the state must leave free. We are therefore not far from the intentions and objectives of the distinction asserted by Pope Gelasius I. We are, however, extremely far from that fundamental separation, "hostile" to religion and tending to subordinate the Churches to the state, imposed by the French Revolution and by the state systems that followed it.

As a result, the entire system of relations between the state and non-state spheres in America developed differently than it did in Europe, attributing to the non-state sphere as well a concrete public character, favored by the legal and fiscal system. In this America, with its specific identity, Catholics assimilated well, despite the resistance from the ideology that wanted to reserve full "North American" identity only for Protestants. In concrete terms, the Catholics soon realized the positive character of separation between state and Church linked to religious motivations and the importance of religious freedom thus guaranteed.

* * *

Until Vatican Council II, however, a difficulty remained, or a reservation on principle, which did not the regard American Catholics as such, but the Catholic Church as a whole. This difficulty concerned the recognition of religious freedom, not simply as the acceptance of a given fact, but as the affirmation of a right, founded on the dignity that belongs to the human person by nature. It is not a coincidence that the conciliar decree on religious freedom "Dignitatis Humanae," which clearly affirmed this right – while steering clear basing it on a relativistic approach that would bring the truth of Christianity into question – was drafted with a significant contribution from North American bishops and theologians.

Vatican II did not limit itself to removing the obstacle concerning religious freedom, but represented the overcoming, at least in principle, of the historical stalling of Catholicism to which I referred previously. In fact, it laid the foundations for a true reconciliation between the Church and modernity, and for the rediscovery of the profound correspondence between Christianity and Enlightenment thought.

In concrete terms, the Council made its own the "anthropological revolution" that since the beginning of the modern age had put man at the center: it demonstrated, in fact, the Christian roots of this revolution, and the lack of foundation for the contrast between the centrality of man and the centrality of God. Similarly, it affirmed, as has already been seen, the legitimate autonomy of earthly realities, the rights and freedoms of men and peoples, recognizing at the same time the validity of the great effort that humanity is making to transform the world.

With Vatican II, therefore, a new season in relations between the Church and secularism was inaugurated, and also between the Catholic Church and freedom: a season in which at first there was hope that all of the disputes about secularism were now behind us.

This hope was not without its concrete reasons, in part and especially concerning the "sensitive" terrain of relations between Church and state. With the full recognition of religious freedom on the part of Vatican Council II, in fact, there was a loss of justification in principle for a "state religion," which had constituted the substantial obstacle to the secularism of the state itself, and of its institutions. Even the difference between "concorditarian" regimes and regimes of separation between state and Church came less relevant at this point, since even the Concordats – as exemplified by the agreement on revision of the Concordat stipulated between the Italian state and the Holy See in 1984 – are now expressly situated outside of the context of a state religion. The protocol added to this agreement states, in fact, in relation to article 1: "The principle originally referred to in the Lateran Pacts, of the Catholic religion as the only religion of the Italian state, should be considered as no longer in effect."

* * *

The events of the past two decades seem, however, to shatter such a hope: we find ourselves, in fact, in a new and acute phase of the dispute about secularism.

Considering the issue carefully, however, the object of contention has profoundly changed: it is no longer a matter, at least in principle, of relations between Church and state as institutions. In this regard, in fact, their mutual distinction and autonomy were substantially accepted and shared by both Catholics and secularists, and together with them the pluralistic openness of the democratic and liberal state to the most diverse positions, all of which in themselves have equal rights and equal dignity before the state. The controversies that arose around these issues therefore seem rather fabricated, and are probably the reflection of the other and more substantial dispute to which we must now turn.

This dispute is mainly focused on the major ethical and anthropological problems that have emerged in recent decades, following both the profound changes in customs and behaviors, and the new applications of biotechnology to the human subject, which have opened horizons unimaginable until the recent past.

These problems, in fact, clearly have a dimension that is not only personal and private, but also public, and cannot be answered except on the basis of the understanding of man that is used as the reference: in particular, the fundamental question of whether man is only natural being, the result of cosmic and biological evolution, or instead has a transcendent dimension as well, which cannot be reduced to the physical universe.

It would be strange, then, for the great religions not to say anything about this, and not make their voice heard on the public stage. As is natural, the leading role in this is taken by the religions that predominate in the various geographical and cultural areas: Christianity in the West, and in Italy in particular, the Catholic Church.

In concrete terms, their voice resonates with a force that few would have expected when an increasingly radical secularization was believed to be the inevitable destiny of the contemporary world, or at least of the West: when, that is, it seemed out of the question that there could be that reawakening, on a worldwide scale, of religions and their public role which has been one of the great new developments of the last few decades. I would like to recall, in this regard, the surprise and distress that were provoked, even in Catholic circles, by the statements that John Paul II made at the conference of the Italian Church in Loreto in that long-ago April of 1985, when he called for a rediscovery of "the role, also public, that Christianity can play for the promotion of man and for the good of Italy, with complete respect and even wholehearted promotion of the religious and civil freedom of all and of each one, without in any way confusing the Church with the political community." John Paul II therefore asked the Italian Church to "work, with humble courage and complete trust in the Lord, so that the Christian faith may have or recover – even and especially in a pluralistic and partially de-Christianized society – a role as a guide and effective engine in the journey toward the future."

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The dispute about secularism centered on the major ethical and anthropological questions now has another proponent, which precisely in relation to these problems takes an antithetical stance toward the Church and Christianity. Its conceptual nucleus is the conviction that man is entirely reducible to the physical universe, while on the ethical and legal level his fundamental task is that of individual freedom, in relation to which any form of discrimination is to be avoided.

This freedom, according to which in the final analysis everything is relative to the individual, is set up as the supreme ethical and legal criterion: every other position is admissible only as long as it does not challenge, but remains subordinate to this relativistic criterion. In this way, the moral norms of Christianity are systematically censored, at least in their public influence. In this way, there has developed in the West that which Benedict XVI has repeatedly called "the dictatorship of relativism," meaning a form of culture that deliberately severs its own historical roots and constitutes a radical contradiction not only of Christianity, but more broadly of the religious and moral traditions of humanity.

But this same severing of the roots is far from being shared by everyone in what is typically called "the secular world." On the contrary, many "secularists" maintain that they must reject such a decision, in order to remain faithful to the authentic roots and motivations of liberalism, which they judge as being incompatible with the dictatorship of relativism.

Then-cardinal Ratzinger, in the book previously mentioned, provided an historical and also a theological motivation for this new harmony between secularists and Catholics, to the point of maintaining that the distinction between these "is relative" ("Without Roots," p. 123). In a letter written to Marcello Pera on the occasion of the recent publication of his book "Perché dobbiamo dirci cristiani. Il liberalismo, l'Europa, l'etica [Why we must call ourselves Christian. Liberalism, Europe, ethics]," Benedict XVI again took a strong position in favor of the intrinsic connection between liberalism and Christianity. Moreover, in the address he delivered in Subiaco on April 1, 2005, the day before John Paul II died, he advanced a "proposal to the secularists": to discard the formula of Hugo Grotius "etsi Deus non daretur" – even if God did not exist – now historically outworn because over the course of the twentieth century there has been a steady decline in the extensive communality of content between civil public ethics and Christian morality that constituted the concrete meaning of this formula, and replace it with its inverse, "veluti si Deus daretur" – as if God did exist. That is, even those who are unable to accept God should seek to live and conduct their lives as if God exists: "This does not impose limitations on anyone's freedom; it gives support to all our human affairs and supplies a criterion of which human life stands sorely in need" (J. Ratzinger, "Christianity and the Crisis of Cultures ", pp. 50-52).

It is necessary to add that not all Catholics share this cordial openness toward these kinds of secularists. In fact, there are some who look at them with suspicion – unwarranted, in my view – fearing that they are exploiting the Christian faith for ideological and political purposes. The main reason for this distrust is that not a few of them, although they are Catholics, do not appear to be truly convinced of the necessity of a concerted effort in the field of public ethics. In concrete terms, these Catholics remain rather attached, regarding secularism, to the classical framework of the division of competencies between civil institutions and ecclesiastical institutions, and seem not to grasp fully the significance of the new development constituted by the emergence of the current ethical and anthropological problems.

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The analysis of the concept of secularism in its concrete historical articulation permits us to attempt a specific answer to the question of the relationship between secularism and the common good.

When it is understood as the autonomy of human activities, which must stand according to their own norms, and in particular as the independence of the state from ecclesiastical authority, secularism is certainly required by the common good, as has been amply demonstrated by the history of modern Europe beginning with the wars of religion. Ernst-Wolfgang Böckenförde, in his classic essay on "The formation of the state as a process of secularization," is among those who best highlighted how only the independence of the state from the various religious confessions could ensure the peace of nations, and the very freedom of believers.

It is a different matter, however, when the concept of secularism is extended to include any reference of human activities, and in particular of the laws of the state and of the entire public sphere, to those ethical principles that find their foundation in human existence itself, in addition to that "religious sense" that expresses our intrinsic openness to transcendence.

In fact, as Böckenförde himself demonstrated at the end of the essay that I mentioned, the secularist liberal state lives on presuppositions that it cannot guarantee itself, and among these, as Hegel maintained, a particular role seems to belong to the moral impulses and restrictions arising from religion.

Very recently, Rémi Brague, in a contribution about "Fede e democrazia" published in the magazine "Aspenia" in 2008 (pp. 206-208), proposed a rather interesting update to Böckenförde's thesis: first of all, by extending it from the state to the man of today, who to a great extent has stopped believing in his own value, because of his reduction to nature and the total relativism that are at the origin of the aforementioned interpretations of secularism. It is man, therefore, and not only the state, who today needs a form of support that he is unable to guarantee for himself. In the second place, religion is not only, or even primarily, a source of ethical impulses and restrictions, as Böckenförde seems to think. Today, before verifying limits and boundaries, it is a matter of finding reasons for living, and this is, from the beginning, the function, or better the mission most proper to Christianity: this, in fact, says first of all not "how" to live, but "why" to live, why to choose life, why to rejoice in it and why to transmit it.

These are the reasons why Benedict XVI has repeatedly proposed a secularism that he himself defines as "healthy" and "positive," which would join to the autonomy of human activities and the independence of the state not preclusion, but openness in regard to fundamental ethical principles and the "religious sense" that we bear within ourselves.

Only a relativism so understood really seems to correspond to the current requirements of the common good, because it overturns those strange tendencies that seem to take pleasure in sapping the vital and moral energies by which each of us, our people, and the entire West lives, without considering how to replace them, or better without realizing that in practice they cannot be replaced.

It is precisely the perception of the decisive value of these reserves of energy that today instead unites many Catholics and secularists and that, in my view, indicates a great common effort awaiting us: giving something of ourselves in order to reinvigorate, instead of drawing down, these reserves.