I am going to give you an analogy and a case study that will help you to understand "how" God "thinks" (by that I mean his perspective on human actions). My purpose is not to help you to try to understand what cannot actually be understood by humans (or even by angels, who while they share God's vision they cannot comprehend how its perfection originates in God, which is why they constantly praise God in heaven). Rather, I am going to help you to look at a sad and unpleasant earthly issue and be better able to make just, righteous and virtuous choices and thus form your own opinions accordingly. I've thought of a few analogy and case studies so here is the first one.
As you know, many people who oppose abortion understand that even certain forms of birth control have shades of abortion, since they destroy the created embryo by not allowing it to implant, etc. While the Catholic Church and others of their belief oppose all forms of terminating preborn life, they recognize that there is a difference between contraception (preventing the embryo from even forming in the first place) and abortion (destroying or hindering the growth of an actual embryo). Thus the Catholic Church opposes both but for different reasons, though both rest on the reverence and valuing of all human life. Contraception is opposed because there is a Biblical prohibition of "spilling one's seed on the ground," which means that all sex acts should occur in a marital situation that is open to the possibility of a pregnancy occurring. So contraception is opposed because it appears that God has instructed that the raw material of pregnancy should not be discarded, wasted or hindered from combining into a pregnancy. Abortion is opposed because it is viewed as not only being devaluing of life and irreverential toward God's commission to be fruitful and multiple, but because it also violates the Commandment against killing. So that is the medical and spiritual background against which this case study takes place.
One way people promote both birth control and abortion is to accuse those who oppose either or both of those practices of being "insensitive" and "cruel" in certain situations. The usual situation is whereby a victim of rape seeks an abortion. Now, the specific case study I want to give to you is the situation regarding why some people oppose giving "morning after" so called "emergency contraception" pills to a rape victim. In other words, working in slightly different ways, these pills create an environment hostile toward a pregnancy either occurring (if it has not yet happened) or the embryo if it is in place being able to attach and grow. Many people, including those of good will and emotional thoughtfulness, wonder how people can be mean as to "condemn" a rape victim to a possible pregnancy.
Before I move to the analogy, where I explain God's way of thinking in the matter, let me remind you that I am not an absolutist, as I have blogged before. I believe that a small child who is raped and pregnant and who is seeking an abortion for the good reasons of her extreme youth and her fragile health, should receive one, and the sin of abortion thus rests upon whoever allowed the rape to occur. I remind you that I blogged about the most recent case of this happening so that you are not distracted in reading my analogy by the thought that I am insensitive and inflexible, for I am not, obviously.
So let's go back to the case study, which is a teenage or adult woman (in other words, not a child as I outlined above) is raped and seeks immediate "after the rape" "emergency contraception," which is medicine that either aborts the newly formed embryo or prevents the sperm and egg from fertilizing, if they had not yet. So I am speaking of someone who could bear a child with the normal risks of pregnancy, but not the additional risk and trauma of a little child being raped.
Here is the analogy that helps shed some light on how God views this dilemma. Imagine there is a poor and primitive village of indigenous people in a remote area, where they barely eke out a living to support themselves, but are otherwise content. One day a man goes insane and kills a married couple, leaving their small child alive, but now with no one to provide for her. How would you feel if the village decided to kill the small child, because they could not support her in the place of her parents and, and this is the important point, the fact that she is now unsupported is the result of a crime.
So think this through. These well meaning villagers have now lost two pairs of hands and legs that used to raise food, build dwellings, haul water, etc due to the crime of murder, and now with that loss of sustenance providing married couple, the village is stuck with a burden, the little girl, that did not exist before, and all because of a crime.
I'll bet many of you have to haul yourself back from the slippery slope of "understanding" that the "poor indigenous" people just "might have to" make a "tough decision" and being "unable to support the little girl" "through no fault of their own" and "because of someone else's crime," they just "can't support the little girl due to this crime" and thus (how long can we delay saying it?)... they kill her, either outright or by allowing her to starve or perish due to wild beasts in the forest, or from exposure to the cold.
No, God would not "understand" that. God would think that the people who do have enough to eat and shelter don't deserve to have even the little they do have if they cannot raise, support and comfort the little girl whose parents, those two able bodied workers, were murdered. Odds are that God would hardly bless the future of the village who killed the child because "they could not support her." Indeed, these villagers would all have to answer to him when they receive on their inevitable death personal judgment.
Now that you understand "how God thinks" in the analogy, now look back to the case study. In both situations you have a helpless child due to a crime (in the case study, due to rape, in the analogy, due to the murder of the parents). God does not want to hear lame, selfish and craven excuses from a poor village who murders due to poverty, so how much less does God want to hear such excuses from a society that has health care, hospitals, welfare, parents and grandparents with salaries, and the potential for adoption?
It is a hard message to understand how God thinks because his thought is entirely based on love and justice. No human can ever live up to that, but they sure should not provoke the obvious because of greed and selfishness, or, and this is understandable, where shattered emotions and self pity due to the rape can lead, due to the weakness of human nature, of blaming the child for "ruining" their "plans." "My life has been ruined, I've been raped and if I have this child I have to pay money and lose a year of college before getting my high paid job and giving the baby away in adoption." Put in God's point of view, while he understands the broken, selfish weakness of humanity (after all, Eve had everything and she still wanted more in the Garden of Eden), it is hardly as noble and kind hearted as humans think they are being when they urge a rape victim to consider "emergency contraception" and/or abortion.
Back to the analogy. Maybe those lazy ass villagers ought to work a little harder to grow a few more crops, rather than just the bit they have, in order to not murder the child. Maybe their doing so would result in them discovering a vein of gold in a stream that they had not noticed before. Sometimes even those in extreme economic situations through genuine kindness can exert themselves even more to support a child, rather than say "We'd like to but we can't."
God is the ultimate democrat, because every life is equally precious in its creation and its potential in his eyes. Many people alive today exist because somewhere in their family tree someone did not abort a child due to rape in warfare or other circumstances.
I hope that this case study and the accompanying analogy has helped you understand one aspect-a very important one-of God's "thoughts." More so I hope this helps you to not have knee jerk reaction to even painful events when developing your own stance, attitudes, thoughts, feelings and ultimately policies and decisions, where you react to the obvious sympathy and empathy without considering all the routes that genuine mercy, virtue and righteous do take place.
Showing posts with label social justice. Show all posts
Showing posts with label social justice. Show all posts
Tuesday, January 12, 2010
Monday, January 4, 2010
Urgent case study: rights definitions
I'm signed on and writing this before doing anything else because I just heard something on a talk show that helped me to realize a huge confusion that I can clear up right here and now. Hi young people, because this is especially for you, you'll see why in a moment. The previous two generations have become so mentally illiterate and sloppy that they no longer understand the definitions of the words they use in everyday speech but, most alarmingly, in politics and the search for social justice. It is no wonder that people are arguing over the correct way to solve huge problems because not only are they not discussing the same thing, defined the same way, they don't even understand what they are arguing for, on behalf of.
The first word I want to clarify, since that is what the talk show mentioned, is "rights." The talk show hosts played a sound byte from a politician where the politician claimed that they (politicians) "create" or "give" rights to people. No, that is incorrect, and the talk show hosts were quick to point this out. Yet I know that many of you would think that rights are created. They are not created; rights are in existence, continual existence. It is the depriving of rights that is the problem in society, so that is the first part of what I want to explain.
Every human being, just by virtue of existing, has certain absolute rights. They are not "rights" conferred by other human beings. To calm those social justice people (and believe me, I am on your side, I am coaching you though in a grave error) let me start with an obvious example. When you are born, no one had to give you a piece of paper saying you had the right to breathe the air. I mean, duh. If someone smothers you, though, they have deprived you of your rights. Do you understand that? When a human being is born they have rights already in existence, the complete set of rights all humans need and are born into, not given to them. Now you can understand the wording of the Founding Fathers better, where they recognize these inherent pre-existing eternal rights, not confer them. Believers understand that these rights are given by God when humans were created in the first place. Ethical non-believers understand that even if they deny a God, those rights are already in place, and don't have to be spelled out by a set of human beings, because it it "natural law" (believers use that term too), or "the right thing to do," or the "ethics of human rights" or other God-neutral but ethic phrases and philosophies. Both believers and non-believers who are ethical understand that genuine rights are eternal, inborn, and already in existence.
That is the first part of what the past two generations have warped and misunderstood. They have taken the eternal and inborn existence of rights and forgotten what that really means. When did this happen? Pretty much in the 1960's when people started saying "I want my rights." Yes, they were correct to perceive that those who suffered injustice were being deprived of rights. But "rights" became shorthand for remedies. Rights are not remedies. Rights cannot be created. They are already in existence. Rights exist and every thinking human, whether a believer or not, needs to protect the language in order to maintain clarity that all people have certainty of the rights that are inborn of being human.
So whether you believe in God or not you must understand that in the USA the Founding Fathers recognized that certain rights are in pre-existence. Go back to the example of the baby being born having the right to breathe air, even though no one wrote a piece of paper saying that that this baby has a license or permit under the law to breathe air upon birth. Anyone who is not insane or an idiot understands that. Thus it is really easy to understand that the right to be alive (including being able to breathe) is automatic upon coming alive (being born), duh. If someone takes a pillow and smothers the baby on birth, two things have happened. The baby's right to life was violated and so the baby was, to use the correct language "deprived of his or her rights." So you have "rights" and their opposite, which is not the "lack of rights" but the "deprivation of rights." And here is where it had become naturally confusing: not only was the smothered baby deprived of his or her rights (to life), but a civil crime was committed, assault, battery and murder. This is where the thinking became blurry during the 1960's and got worse and worse until now when it seems no one understands simple basic concepts and definitions anymore.
Just a pause, this is not going to turn into an abortion argument, so put that aside and let us work together for clarity about human rights. I am using the baby, full term, born in a wanted situation (presumably) for its universal ease in understanding, not for agenda. Keep that in mind when I start to also discuss in this case study civil (racial) deprivation of rights.
The Founding Fathers recognized every human being already has three basic "rights:" life (the right to be alive and not to have life truncated, such as in the smothering), liberty (the right to be free and not in bondage to another human being) and the pursuit of happiness (the right to lead one's life in search of sustaining and satisfaction). If you think about this, this is such a profound insight. In a pithy way the Founding Fathers summarized, using three simple words and phrases, these universal God given (or natural law/ethics) rights and pre-exist.
So you say, well, why was slavery and so forth legal when one has the right to liberty? Now you are getting it. Notice to ask me that question you said slavery was "legal?" It was not, correctly speaking, a right; many laws and social customs are violation of and deprivation of inherent rights. The civil rights movement started out using the verbiage correctly, but society started eroding their understanding of the fact that it happens every day throughout human society, this problem:
1. All humans have inherent rights not created by humans but eternal and already in place.
2. Some humans deprive other human beings of those rights.
3. Some deprivation of rights are actually legal under human made laws, but they are always wrong as they are deprivation of rights.
4. Human rights must always trump laws that deprive of human rights, but in reality we see that often the opposite takes place.
5. Rights cannot be created; rights already exist. What humans can do is restore those who have been deprived of their rights to no longer be deprived.
So now let me tackle the second core area of confusion about rights and the law. We now understand that rights already exist, totally without human creation or control. We also recognize that the problem is humans who deprive other humans of their rights. Thus slavery, while legal, was not "a right," (even if in the lingo people used that word) but slavery was, instead, a legal but unrighteous deprivation of human rights. Remember there is worldwide slavery still going on, both of servitude and sexual, and thus we must urgently understand that there is no "right," either legal or for "free market" reasons, for slavery in any form at all. Period. When slaves are freed they have not "gained" a right; their inherent rights have been restored.
So the second area of confusion exists around the terms "entitlement" and "reparation." Let's roll up sleeves and clear that up so we can actually get something done in this world before it is too late.
Remember that no one has a right to tax; taxing is a law, a mechanism, not a right. An entitlement is an expenditure of money gained by taxes, but it is a specific form of expenditure as a group is designated by "title" to receive funds. Thus that group is "entitled" because the name of the group segregates them from others so they receive special tax money. Let's use an obvious example.
The baby has been born and was not smothered, and so mother and father now have a person with a new title in their family "a child." Under USA tax law anyone who has the title "child" is entitled to being a tax deduction on the government tax forms. The baby was born with rights, but not with an entitlement. Entitlements are political, social, monarch or other human based decisions to confer or not, and has nothing to do with "rights." Too many people, both conservatives and liberals, think that they have a "right" to "entitlements." They may have a legal right, but we are speaking of human rights here. Human rights have become blurred by those who most advocate them by mixing them up with the concept of legal remedies and legal rights such as entitlements. Humans pass and enact entitlements for their own perceived fairness or merit agendas; humans do not create "rights" because human rights already exist.
So one must maintain clarity of thought and language, when one is debating or problem solving the giving of human laws/legal entitlements versus the problem of restoring deprived human rights. Too many well meaning people have ferocious arguments that are bull crap because they are not even speaking about either rights or entitlements/remedies/deprivation of rights (three different things). Do not "look" to law for "your rights," unless you mean "legal rights". In other words, no law states that a baby has the obvious human right to breathe the air. A law does say you can't smother a baby. If you look to human law for God given (natural, ethical) rights, you are lost from the very beginning, as human rights are in pre-existence, not conferred by law.
Human rights are like gold in a mine that is as yet undiscovered. The gold is already there and it's not there because some human "created gold" and then "injected it into a mountain," duh. Yet people can pass laws about who can own or explore the land. Those laws have nothing to do with the fact that the gold already exists, without the will or workings of mere human hands. Human rights exist and are eternal, no matter what a human being says or does. The problem is that many people deprive others of their human rights. It would be as if people told each other, "Well, the unmined gold in that mountain only exists if you have brown eyes, while if you have blue eyes that gold does not exist." We are not even speaking of the legality of pursuing the mining, we are speaking of a lack of reality of people who deprive others of their human rights, saying those human rights do not exist when they do, obviously, just as the gold exists whether you have brown eyes or blue.
This, young people, is one reason why faith in God gives, not takes away, strength, logic and clarity to human actions. Those who believe in God have a better comprehension of God given human rights. This is not because they necessarily "do better" or "behave better" or are "more moral" or "more ethical" than a well meaning atheist, for example. I'm not saying that at all. Rather, what I am saying is that non-believing human rights advocates live entirely within the framework of human created laws, and often they are caught and limited by the snares of human nature and laws. They say "you don't need to believe in God to be good," and that is true, but if they do not believe in God, then they believe only in the goodness of man, and that can only be understood, as a consequence, via deeds and laws. They inadvertently take their eyes off of the inherent truth of eternal inborn human rights (since they don't believe it is God given and inborn) and thus they think of rights as good behavior and laws. They put their own well meaning aim too low and too limited.
Like abortion, I am not making this about black/white slavery (notice I am speaking much of modern slavery, which is commercial/sexual and labor servitude) so do not try to discern agenda: I'm on everyone's side here. But I will now deliberately discuss the black/white slavery legacy in order to build upon the clarity of definitions by now tackling "remedy" and "reparations." I'm not using USA Native Americans in the case study because I need to keep this a global example.
First, to recap:
1. Human rights are inborn and pre-exist.
2. Human rights can be deprived, and often are, but are not created by humans.
3. Deprived human rights must be addressed and restored. In other words the depriving of rights must cease.
4. Entitlements are a special legal monetary consideration given to a designated group, which reflects the priorities of society.
5. Remedies are the means by which an injustice is corrected and rights restored, not "given."
Let's start with an easy example. Someone breaks into your house and steals your television. The police catch the person and give you back your television. The police "restore" your goods, your television, they do not need to write a law "giving you a right to own a television." You already had the right to the television.
Human rights are the same thing. The rights already exist, but some humans deprive others. Those humans need to be stopped from depriving others. When someone is stopped from depriving a person of their rights, all is automatically good again. The rights were always there, but someone blocked you from them. Now the rights are restored when the person stops depriving you of them.
But hold on, you say, damage is done when rights were deprived. I agree. But you must be clear in your mind what you are working on in a given moment: 1) restoring access to deprived rights and/or 2) compensating for the damage.
Let's say the thief smashed a window to get into your house to take the TV. If, in our silly but usefully clear example, TV represents a human right you already had, when the police remove the deprivation of your right as a problem (someone else had your TV) that concludes their role in this matter. Part of society must focus on ensuring that no one's rights are deprived. That is not the same as the part of society that now helps you to inventory the damage and get you back on your feet. The police do not fix your window, or give you money to have it fixed. They also do not take a window out of the thief's house and give it to you. Human rights campaigners must focus, like the TV recovering police, on removing obstacles to other people's access to their pre-existing human rights. Human rights should not at all complicate their essential first priority with issues of remedy and reparations, since those require human created processes, rules, law, procedures and logic. For example the homeowner may have an insurance policy and pursues remedy based not on human rights but the commercial agreement he or she has in place for insurance reimbursement.
Now, here's where we need to clear up the whole "slavery reparations" language. You might, being an attentive reader, now put two and two together and say, "Well, suppose the culture gives an entitlement that all people who had TV's stolen from them gets a $100 tax credit or payment to remedy that their rights were violated." Now you are talking! See? Now you are getting somewhere. You have separated the restoration of deprived human rights from the "picking up the mess left behind" process. That would be a logical use of the entitlement human made process, not right to address lingering damage from a now corrected deprivation of human rights. An entitlement is the creating of a group of people based on their title (titles such as senior citizens, social security recipients, children, people who had their TV's stolen) who now receive goods, services or usually monatary special consideration. Remember, a human baby has the pre-existing universal inborn right to be born and to breathe the air, a crime is committed (and that right was deprived) if the baby is smothered, but the decision to give a tax deduction to the successfully born baby is an entitlement based on the title "child."
Suppose someone tried to smother the baby in the hospital and while they did not succeed they did some real damage to the baby. This is now the area of remedy and it is entirely dealt with by human laws and processes. This is where morality must be one's compass and this is what the Bible means about being "righteous" and "just." Here's what I mean.
Righteousness and justice must be immediate and focused on the actual people involved in the problem. You go after the guy who stole the TV for remedy and damages, not anyone who ever stole a TV. You go after whoever tried to smother your baby (and perhaps the bad procedures of where this crime took place), but you don't sue every hospital and every person who ever wronged a child. In other words, remedy is targeted and immediate. Too many in society have drifted away from that understanding in their attempts to "recover" what is they are "entitled to." See? That's wrong language. No one is "entitled" to "remedy" unless an entitlement law exists that all people who had stolen TV sets (title) receive $100. Remedy is the attempt to provide justice and righteousness after a wrong has been committed, and there is a wide range of possible valid avenues for remedy, all based on human law, process and free will regarding goodness, charity and virtue.
Two people each had a TV stolen via smashed windows. One gets reimbursement from their insurance company. The other does not have insurance, but has a friend who owns a window business and the friend, through charity, rebuilds and replaces the window for free.
The term "reparations" is best understood as the financial punishment levied onto the combatant who is defeated in a war. So now, build on the foundation I have given to you about entitlements and remedy. If one country is attacked unjustly by another, yet defeats the aggressor at great cost, the aggrieved victorious country may well indeed impose reparations onto the aggressor losing nation. The most obvious example of that is World War I when huge, back breaking reparations were placed upon Germany, the aggressor and loser of the war. (And put aside all the nuance around who did what to whom and stick to the basic facts). In reparations you clobber the entire country because they are the unit by which the injustice occurred. So even the peace movement in the aggressor country would get clobbered by reparations, as no distinction is made. That's not entirely bad because we all understand enablers, whether willing or against their will. It's the theory that a country could not war if people such as farmers did not keep growing food and thus enable the war machine, even if the farmers themselves were against the war in the first place.
That is the slippery slope of reparations. They are strictly speaking logical but in reality there is a huge problem. The first problem is that it must be immediate. In other words, the second generation should not pay for the war of the first generation. The second problem is, as I stated, reparations are the largest and broadest of all entitlements. The title thus becomes "an entire country."
Those are the problems in logic and justice that even well meaning black/white slave reparations face, which is why it is a waste of time to discuss it, really. I am not at all marganizing what has been done, but I am trying to be your friend and your coach and teach you how to be alive and have your rights today. So bear with me as we use this sensitive subject in this case study.
You no doubt agree with me that reparations must be 1) immediate and 2) appropriately targeted. I bet you think I'm going to say it's "too late" for reparations, since legal slavery ended over one hundred years ago. Nope, I'm not going to say that. I'm going to help you get reparations. Here is what you need to do. You need to determine who took your TV or, rather, your ancestors' TV, and you have suffered as a result. Thus you need to research in Africa which tribes first captured your ancestors and name them as the first liable group for reparations. In general many Africans were captured and sold into slavery by rival African tribes. So you need to identify which ones were involved and proportion responsibility. Then you need to identify the European countries/monarchies that funded the slave capturing and transport. Your rights were first deprived by those who captured your ancestors, those who stole your TV, and by those who provided the capturing and transportation facilities. Your rights were then secondly in time sequence deprived by the slave owners who purchased and kept the slaves. Thus you must outline the shape of your "war reparations country" in order to appropriately target them. But in your case it is a virtual country, to use the computer term, who owe you reparations. Not to be political I will make up names, except for the USA.
Virtual reparations country: 30% the African tribes X, Y, Z who captured and sold slaves, 30% the European countries O, P, Q who seized slaves, provided men and ships to transport them, 40% the actual white people in the USA who sold, owned and profited from slaves.
You see the problem? Genuine reparations have one of two possiblities: 1) designate a country as being "guilty" such as was done in WWI or 2) identify those who actually conducted the wrong and apportion blame according to their actual participation.
So without taking sides, dear friends, I am simply teaching you the difference between genuine reparations and entitlements. A society could take the stance that every person who had an almost smothered child, or a stolen TV (and I'm not trivializing, but using the case study materials) gets an entitlement based on that title as a remedy. A society could try to designate that those who descended from an almost smothered child also receives an entitlement. The problem is that entitlement comes from your own participatory tax dollars, by definition. Reparations comes from "the other guy" the one who "actually did it." In order to do just reparations you have to research and apportion (wow, would that keep lawyers busy!) guilt and blame and then trace the descendants and apportion the cost of the reparations aka entitlement to them. You know that makes very little sense because the rule of reparations is that if done against a group you are indeed charging those who were innocent and against the war in the first place, and also their subsequent generations.
I don't want to get too far into transforming this into a slavery reparations case study since this is a case study about rights, and how rights are inborn and eternal, compared to human devices such as deprivation of rights, entitlements, remedy, crime and reparations.
But you see that many in public office, and privately, have their definitions all backwards and blurry and ultimately ineffective. As a result humans are farther from understanding their inherent God (or natural/ethical) given rights, rather than closer. So when I listen to political or legal debate I really find it so pointless because people are not even sure what they are arguing about factually and clearly, in truth. This is a problem of rights, entitlement and remedy policy in all parts of life in all societies and governments, where people have lost actual understanding of the ultimate motivation which is inborn rights of all humans and the removal of the means of depriving rights in the here and now. Without that first everything else is futile and even counterproductive fail. What good will it be if two hundred years from now people are arguing how to remedy the legacy of child sexual slavery and abuse, for example, if they allowed it to happen in the here and now? People, it's only one lived human life apiece, and one earth, and the consequences (and thus remedies) must happen in the here and now, based on universal recognition of authentic inborn human rights and removal of real deprivations of those human rights.
I hope that you have understood this and find it helpful.
The first word I want to clarify, since that is what the talk show mentioned, is "rights." The talk show hosts played a sound byte from a politician where the politician claimed that they (politicians) "create" or "give" rights to people. No, that is incorrect, and the talk show hosts were quick to point this out. Yet I know that many of you would think that rights are created. They are not created; rights are in existence, continual existence. It is the depriving of rights that is the problem in society, so that is the first part of what I want to explain.
Every human being, just by virtue of existing, has certain absolute rights. They are not "rights" conferred by other human beings. To calm those social justice people (and believe me, I am on your side, I am coaching you though in a grave error) let me start with an obvious example. When you are born, no one had to give you a piece of paper saying you had the right to breathe the air. I mean, duh. If someone smothers you, though, they have deprived you of your rights. Do you understand that? When a human being is born they have rights already in existence, the complete set of rights all humans need and are born into, not given to them. Now you can understand the wording of the Founding Fathers better, where they recognize these inherent pre-existing eternal rights, not confer them. Believers understand that these rights are given by God when humans were created in the first place. Ethical non-believers understand that even if they deny a God, those rights are already in place, and don't have to be spelled out by a set of human beings, because it it "natural law" (believers use that term too), or "the right thing to do," or the "ethics of human rights" or other God-neutral but ethic phrases and philosophies. Both believers and non-believers who are ethical understand that genuine rights are eternal, inborn, and already in existence.
That is the first part of what the past two generations have warped and misunderstood. They have taken the eternal and inborn existence of rights and forgotten what that really means. When did this happen? Pretty much in the 1960's when people started saying "I want my rights." Yes, they were correct to perceive that those who suffered injustice were being deprived of rights. But "rights" became shorthand for remedies. Rights are not remedies. Rights cannot be created. They are already in existence. Rights exist and every thinking human, whether a believer or not, needs to protect the language in order to maintain clarity that all people have certainty of the rights that are inborn of being human.
So whether you believe in God or not you must understand that in the USA the Founding Fathers recognized that certain rights are in pre-existence. Go back to the example of the baby being born having the right to breathe air, even though no one wrote a piece of paper saying that that this baby has a license or permit under the law to breathe air upon birth. Anyone who is not insane or an idiot understands that. Thus it is really easy to understand that the right to be alive (including being able to breathe) is automatic upon coming alive (being born), duh. If someone takes a pillow and smothers the baby on birth, two things have happened. The baby's right to life was violated and so the baby was, to use the correct language "deprived of his or her rights." So you have "rights" and their opposite, which is not the "lack of rights" but the "deprivation of rights." And here is where it had become naturally confusing: not only was the smothered baby deprived of his or her rights (to life), but a civil crime was committed, assault, battery and murder. This is where the thinking became blurry during the 1960's and got worse and worse until now when it seems no one understands simple basic concepts and definitions anymore.
Just a pause, this is not going to turn into an abortion argument, so put that aside and let us work together for clarity about human rights. I am using the baby, full term, born in a wanted situation (presumably) for its universal ease in understanding, not for agenda. Keep that in mind when I start to also discuss in this case study civil (racial) deprivation of rights.
The Founding Fathers recognized every human being already has three basic "rights:" life (the right to be alive and not to have life truncated, such as in the smothering), liberty (the right to be free and not in bondage to another human being) and the pursuit of happiness (the right to lead one's life in search of sustaining and satisfaction). If you think about this, this is such a profound insight. In a pithy way the Founding Fathers summarized, using three simple words and phrases, these universal God given (or natural law/ethics) rights and pre-exist.
So you say, well, why was slavery and so forth legal when one has the right to liberty? Now you are getting it. Notice to ask me that question you said slavery was "legal?" It was not, correctly speaking, a right; many laws and social customs are violation of and deprivation of inherent rights. The civil rights movement started out using the verbiage correctly, but society started eroding their understanding of the fact that it happens every day throughout human society, this problem:
1. All humans have inherent rights not created by humans but eternal and already in place.
2. Some humans deprive other human beings of those rights.
3. Some deprivation of rights are actually legal under human made laws, but they are always wrong as they are deprivation of rights.
4. Human rights must always trump laws that deprive of human rights, but in reality we see that often the opposite takes place.
5. Rights cannot be created; rights already exist. What humans can do is restore those who have been deprived of their rights to no longer be deprived.
So now let me tackle the second core area of confusion about rights and the law. We now understand that rights already exist, totally without human creation or control. We also recognize that the problem is humans who deprive other humans of their rights. Thus slavery, while legal, was not "a right," (even if in the lingo people used that word) but slavery was, instead, a legal but unrighteous deprivation of human rights. Remember there is worldwide slavery still going on, both of servitude and sexual, and thus we must urgently understand that there is no "right," either legal or for "free market" reasons, for slavery in any form at all. Period. When slaves are freed they have not "gained" a right; their inherent rights have been restored.
So the second area of confusion exists around the terms "entitlement" and "reparation." Let's roll up sleeves and clear that up so we can actually get something done in this world before it is too late.
Remember that no one has a right to tax; taxing is a law, a mechanism, not a right. An entitlement is an expenditure of money gained by taxes, but it is a specific form of expenditure as a group is designated by "title" to receive funds. Thus that group is "entitled" because the name of the group segregates them from others so they receive special tax money. Let's use an obvious example.
The baby has been born and was not smothered, and so mother and father now have a person with a new title in their family "a child." Under USA tax law anyone who has the title "child" is entitled to being a tax deduction on the government tax forms. The baby was born with rights, but not with an entitlement. Entitlements are political, social, monarch or other human based decisions to confer or not, and has nothing to do with "rights." Too many people, both conservatives and liberals, think that they have a "right" to "entitlements." They may have a legal right, but we are speaking of human rights here. Human rights have become blurred by those who most advocate them by mixing them up with the concept of legal remedies and legal rights such as entitlements. Humans pass and enact entitlements for their own perceived fairness or merit agendas; humans do not create "rights" because human rights already exist.
So one must maintain clarity of thought and language, when one is debating or problem solving the giving of human laws/legal entitlements versus the problem of restoring deprived human rights. Too many well meaning people have ferocious arguments that are bull crap because they are not even speaking about either rights or entitlements/remedies/deprivation of rights (three different things). Do not "look" to law for "your rights," unless you mean "legal rights". In other words, no law states that a baby has the obvious human right to breathe the air. A law does say you can't smother a baby. If you look to human law for God given (natural, ethical) rights, you are lost from the very beginning, as human rights are in pre-existence, not conferred by law.
Human rights are like gold in a mine that is as yet undiscovered. The gold is already there and it's not there because some human "created gold" and then "injected it into a mountain," duh. Yet people can pass laws about who can own or explore the land. Those laws have nothing to do with the fact that the gold already exists, without the will or workings of mere human hands. Human rights exist and are eternal, no matter what a human being says or does. The problem is that many people deprive others of their human rights. It would be as if people told each other, "Well, the unmined gold in that mountain only exists if you have brown eyes, while if you have blue eyes that gold does not exist." We are not even speaking of the legality of pursuing the mining, we are speaking of a lack of reality of people who deprive others of their human rights, saying those human rights do not exist when they do, obviously, just as the gold exists whether you have brown eyes or blue.
This, young people, is one reason why faith in God gives, not takes away, strength, logic and clarity to human actions. Those who believe in God have a better comprehension of God given human rights. This is not because they necessarily "do better" or "behave better" or are "more moral" or "more ethical" than a well meaning atheist, for example. I'm not saying that at all. Rather, what I am saying is that non-believing human rights advocates live entirely within the framework of human created laws, and often they are caught and limited by the snares of human nature and laws. They say "you don't need to believe in God to be good," and that is true, but if they do not believe in God, then they believe only in the goodness of man, and that can only be understood, as a consequence, via deeds and laws. They inadvertently take their eyes off of the inherent truth of eternal inborn human rights (since they don't believe it is God given and inborn) and thus they think of rights as good behavior and laws. They put their own well meaning aim too low and too limited.
Like abortion, I am not making this about black/white slavery (notice I am speaking much of modern slavery, which is commercial/sexual and labor servitude) so do not try to discern agenda: I'm on everyone's side here. But I will now deliberately discuss the black/white slavery legacy in order to build upon the clarity of definitions by now tackling "remedy" and "reparations." I'm not using USA Native Americans in the case study because I need to keep this a global example.
First, to recap:
1. Human rights are inborn and pre-exist.
2. Human rights can be deprived, and often are, but are not created by humans.
3. Deprived human rights must be addressed and restored. In other words the depriving of rights must cease.
4. Entitlements are a special legal monetary consideration given to a designated group, which reflects the priorities of society.
5. Remedies are the means by which an injustice is corrected and rights restored, not "given."
Let's start with an easy example. Someone breaks into your house and steals your television. The police catch the person and give you back your television. The police "restore" your goods, your television, they do not need to write a law "giving you a right to own a television." You already had the right to the television.
Human rights are the same thing. The rights already exist, but some humans deprive others. Those humans need to be stopped from depriving others. When someone is stopped from depriving a person of their rights, all is automatically good again. The rights were always there, but someone blocked you from them. Now the rights are restored when the person stops depriving you of them.
But hold on, you say, damage is done when rights were deprived. I agree. But you must be clear in your mind what you are working on in a given moment: 1) restoring access to deprived rights and/or 2) compensating for the damage.
Let's say the thief smashed a window to get into your house to take the TV. If, in our silly but usefully clear example, TV represents a human right you already had, when the police remove the deprivation of your right as a problem (someone else had your TV) that concludes their role in this matter. Part of society must focus on ensuring that no one's rights are deprived. That is not the same as the part of society that now helps you to inventory the damage and get you back on your feet. The police do not fix your window, or give you money to have it fixed. They also do not take a window out of the thief's house and give it to you. Human rights campaigners must focus, like the TV recovering police, on removing obstacles to other people's access to their pre-existing human rights. Human rights should not at all complicate their essential first priority with issues of remedy and reparations, since those require human created processes, rules, law, procedures and logic. For example the homeowner may have an insurance policy and pursues remedy based not on human rights but the commercial agreement he or she has in place for insurance reimbursement.
Now, here's where we need to clear up the whole "slavery reparations" language. You might, being an attentive reader, now put two and two together and say, "Well, suppose the culture gives an entitlement that all people who had TV's stolen from them gets a $100 tax credit or payment to remedy that their rights were violated." Now you are talking! See? Now you are getting somewhere. You have separated the restoration of deprived human rights from the "picking up the mess left behind" process. That would be a logical use of the entitlement human made process, not right to address lingering damage from a now corrected deprivation of human rights. An entitlement is the creating of a group of people based on their title (titles such as senior citizens, social security recipients, children, people who had their TV's stolen) who now receive goods, services or usually monatary special consideration. Remember, a human baby has the pre-existing universal inborn right to be born and to breathe the air, a crime is committed (and that right was deprived) if the baby is smothered, but the decision to give a tax deduction to the successfully born baby is an entitlement based on the title "child."
Suppose someone tried to smother the baby in the hospital and while they did not succeed they did some real damage to the baby. This is now the area of remedy and it is entirely dealt with by human laws and processes. This is where morality must be one's compass and this is what the Bible means about being "righteous" and "just." Here's what I mean.
Righteousness and justice must be immediate and focused on the actual people involved in the problem. You go after the guy who stole the TV for remedy and damages, not anyone who ever stole a TV. You go after whoever tried to smother your baby (and perhaps the bad procedures of where this crime took place), but you don't sue every hospital and every person who ever wronged a child. In other words, remedy is targeted and immediate. Too many in society have drifted away from that understanding in their attempts to "recover" what is they are "entitled to." See? That's wrong language. No one is "entitled" to "remedy" unless an entitlement law exists that all people who had stolen TV sets (title) receive $100. Remedy is the attempt to provide justice and righteousness after a wrong has been committed, and there is a wide range of possible valid avenues for remedy, all based on human law, process and free will regarding goodness, charity and virtue.
Two people each had a TV stolen via smashed windows. One gets reimbursement from their insurance company. The other does not have insurance, but has a friend who owns a window business and the friend, through charity, rebuilds and replaces the window for free.
The term "reparations" is best understood as the financial punishment levied onto the combatant who is defeated in a war. So now, build on the foundation I have given to you about entitlements and remedy. If one country is attacked unjustly by another, yet defeats the aggressor at great cost, the aggrieved victorious country may well indeed impose reparations onto the aggressor losing nation. The most obvious example of that is World War I when huge, back breaking reparations were placed upon Germany, the aggressor and loser of the war. (And put aside all the nuance around who did what to whom and stick to the basic facts). In reparations you clobber the entire country because they are the unit by which the injustice occurred. So even the peace movement in the aggressor country would get clobbered by reparations, as no distinction is made. That's not entirely bad because we all understand enablers, whether willing or against their will. It's the theory that a country could not war if people such as farmers did not keep growing food and thus enable the war machine, even if the farmers themselves were against the war in the first place.
That is the slippery slope of reparations. They are strictly speaking logical but in reality there is a huge problem. The first problem is that it must be immediate. In other words, the second generation should not pay for the war of the first generation. The second problem is, as I stated, reparations are the largest and broadest of all entitlements. The title thus becomes "an entire country."
Those are the problems in logic and justice that even well meaning black/white slave reparations face, which is why it is a waste of time to discuss it, really. I am not at all marganizing what has been done, but I am trying to be your friend and your coach and teach you how to be alive and have your rights today. So bear with me as we use this sensitive subject in this case study.
You no doubt agree with me that reparations must be 1) immediate and 2) appropriately targeted. I bet you think I'm going to say it's "too late" for reparations, since legal slavery ended over one hundred years ago. Nope, I'm not going to say that. I'm going to help you get reparations. Here is what you need to do. You need to determine who took your TV or, rather, your ancestors' TV, and you have suffered as a result. Thus you need to research in Africa which tribes first captured your ancestors and name them as the first liable group for reparations. In general many Africans were captured and sold into slavery by rival African tribes. So you need to identify which ones were involved and proportion responsibility. Then you need to identify the European countries/monarchies that funded the slave capturing and transport. Your rights were first deprived by those who captured your ancestors, those who stole your TV, and by those who provided the capturing and transportation facilities. Your rights were then secondly in time sequence deprived by the slave owners who purchased and kept the slaves. Thus you must outline the shape of your "war reparations country" in order to appropriately target them. But in your case it is a virtual country, to use the computer term, who owe you reparations. Not to be political I will make up names, except for the USA.
Virtual reparations country: 30% the African tribes X, Y, Z who captured and sold slaves, 30% the European countries O, P, Q who seized slaves, provided men and ships to transport them, 40% the actual white people in the USA who sold, owned and profited from slaves.
You see the problem? Genuine reparations have one of two possiblities: 1) designate a country as being "guilty" such as was done in WWI or 2) identify those who actually conducted the wrong and apportion blame according to their actual participation.
So without taking sides, dear friends, I am simply teaching you the difference between genuine reparations and entitlements. A society could take the stance that every person who had an almost smothered child, or a stolen TV (and I'm not trivializing, but using the case study materials) gets an entitlement based on that title as a remedy. A society could try to designate that those who descended from an almost smothered child also receives an entitlement. The problem is that entitlement comes from your own participatory tax dollars, by definition. Reparations comes from "the other guy" the one who "actually did it." In order to do just reparations you have to research and apportion (wow, would that keep lawyers busy!) guilt and blame and then trace the descendants and apportion the cost of the reparations aka entitlement to them. You know that makes very little sense because the rule of reparations is that if done against a group you are indeed charging those who were innocent and against the war in the first place, and also their subsequent generations.
I don't want to get too far into transforming this into a slavery reparations case study since this is a case study about rights, and how rights are inborn and eternal, compared to human devices such as deprivation of rights, entitlements, remedy, crime and reparations.
But you see that many in public office, and privately, have their definitions all backwards and blurry and ultimately ineffective. As a result humans are farther from understanding their inherent God (or natural/ethical) given rights, rather than closer. So when I listen to political or legal debate I really find it so pointless because people are not even sure what they are arguing about factually and clearly, in truth. This is a problem of rights, entitlement and remedy policy in all parts of life in all societies and governments, where people have lost actual understanding of the ultimate motivation which is inborn rights of all humans and the removal of the means of depriving rights in the here and now. Without that first everything else is futile and even counterproductive fail. What good will it be if two hundred years from now people are arguing how to remedy the legacy of child sexual slavery and abuse, for example, if they allowed it to happen in the here and now? People, it's only one lived human life apiece, and one earth, and the consequences (and thus remedies) must happen in the here and now, based on universal recognition of authentic inborn human rights and removal of real deprivations of those human rights.
I hope that you have understood this and find it helpful.
Wednesday, December 30, 2009
Second of a few end of calendar year thoughts
This will be short and to the point, but it is the "great unspoken," so I will once again speak and say it.
Another year has gone by, capping another decade that has gone by, without genuine justice, truth telling and peace in the Middle East.
I have found myself wondering often, as I see the evidence most clearly before me, if many humans have been so deluded that they genuinely prefer to see Armageddon type so called "signs" in the Middle East, rather than roll up their sleeves and achieve genuine and honorable peace and justice. You know who I mean.
The angels proclaimed their declarations from God upon the birth of Jesus of peace to men (people) of "good will." There will be no peace in the Middle East until people get back to work on it in the transparent and fresh air of truthfulness and genuine good will. Again, this comes down to living righteously, not self proclaimed self-righteousness.
Another year has gone by, capping another decade that has gone by, without genuine justice, truth telling and peace in the Middle East.
I have found myself wondering often, as I see the evidence most clearly before me, if many humans have been so deluded that they genuinely prefer to see Armageddon type so called "signs" in the Middle East, rather than roll up their sleeves and achieve genuine and honorable peace and justice. You know who I mean.
The angels proclaimed their declarations from God upon the birth of Jesus of peace to men (people) of "good will." There will be no peace in the Middle East until people get back to work on it in the transparent and fresh air of truthfulness and genuine good will. Again, this comes down to living righteously, not self proclaimed self-righteousness.
Wednesday, November 11, 2009
Catholics may need to "Atlas Shrug"
Ayn Rand is known for her rather goofy opus called "Atlas Shrugged," where industrialists, feeling "unappreciated," eventually "go on strike" and "disappear," until ungrateful society begs them to "return." This was, needless to say, a quite godless and unspiritual book, but generations have found it fascinating, and that's cool.
It occurs to me that the Roman Catholic Church needs to borrow a leaf from "Atlas Shrugged" and simply walk away from many of the social services programs that they have in place. Why do I feel this way? For three reasons:
1. In progressive and anti-Catholic or anti-Christian governments there is pressure on Catholic charities to loosen their doctrine in return for continuing to receive government money. My advice: walk away from those programs totally. Let them give the money to someone else to do their "social programs" their way. It is a blessing in disguise as the Church can concentrate its mission on what is central: the saving of souls and the transmission of solid faith formation.
2. I obviously do not feel this way in the truly needy populations of the world where the Catholic Church provides vital and often willfully invisible (as in pointedly ignored by the media) services to the most dire of the sick and the poor. So shift the resources that Catholics give from the ungrateful areas (that obviously have "other sources") to those who are truly thankful and in need. It only makes sense. If you give the same gift every Christmas to two sons, and one thanks you and the other punches you in the face, I would suggest giving both gifts to the son who thanks you.
3. The world is not starved for social services programs; it is starved for sanctity and prayer. I think the Catholic Church needs to downsize its social involvement, even where it is sad and painful to do so, in order to return to prayerful and dedicated attention to the sacraments, education and overall sanctity. Downsize and refocus the mission. That way all those critics of the Catholic Church will have to change from criticizing the way we conducted our social programs to criticizing us for not having enough social programs. That would be cool, like bonus points, to the main purpose which is to refocus on the sacred work.
Jesus Christ brought God, not a soup kitchen community organizer. Plenty of charity can indeed and must be done through individual, congregation and community involvement, but I believe the time for us to lead large social programs is over when so many don't give a flying you know what if we do AND seek to erode them and use them as ways to whip up hatred against the Catholic Church.
I say, take the money we use in social programs in the higher developed countries and regions and instead reallocate and devote them to the formation of priests and other religious. Hey, isn't that what everyone is saying we ought to do? "Clean up" all those "bad priests?" Save an altar boy?
Not to minimize at all, as my regular readers know, my zero tolerance for sexual and other abuse or emotionally predatory behavior. So don't waste my time thinking I'm not condemning all abuse in the strongest terms, as I have all along.
But it has come to the point where not a single article about anything good, bad, or neutral can appear in the press without hate mongers commenting about sodomy and rape and buggering and whatever. So I say make them happy and withdraw from all social programs ALL of them in the better developed areas of the world and let them find "alternative providers." Use the social services program funding to "clean up all those pedophiles," you know, all the ones who flock to the Catholic Church. Yep, let's do that. Take the money from the social programs and use them for priest and religious formation. Seriously, as we all know the aging population of faithful religious live in great poverty and often in worse conditions than the people they dedicated their lives to serving.
I'd like to see the Catholic Church just walk away from MANY of the social services programs and instead invest those alms that are donated and income that is generated by the church toward inward, prayerful places and people of sanctity.
Ta ta I say. What say you? I think that would be music to the ears of those who demean all the Catholic Church has done. Win-win, then, no?
It occurs to me that the Roman Catholic Church needs to borrow a leaf from "Atlas Shrugged" and simply walk away from many of the social services programs that they have in place. Why do I feel this way? For three reasons:
1. In progressive and anti-Catholic or anti-Christian governments there is pressure on Catholic charities to loosen their doctrine in return for continuing to receive government money. My advice: walk away from those programs totally. Let them give the money to someone else to do their "social programs" their way. It is a blessing in disguise as the Church can concentrate its mission on what is central: the saving of souls and the transmission of solid faith formation.
2. I obviously do not feel this way in the truly needy populations of the world where the Catholic Church provides vital and often willfully invisible (as in pointedly ignored by the media) services to the most dire of the sick and the poor. So shift the resources that Catholics give from the ungrateful areas (that obviously have "other sources") to those who are truly thankful and in need. It only makes sense. If you give the same gift every Christmas to two sons, and one thanks you and the other punches you in the face, I would suggest giving both gifts to the son who thanks you.
3. The world is not starved for social services programs; it is starved for sanctity and prayer. I think the Catholic Church needs to downsize its social involvement, even where it is sad and painful to do so, in order to return to prayerful and dedicated attention to the sacraments, education and overall sanctity. Downsize and refocus the mission. That way all those critics of the Catholic Church will have to change from criticizing the way we conducted our social programs to criticizing us for not having enough social programs. That would be cool, like bonus points, to the main purpose which is to refocus on the sacred work.
Jesus Christ brought God, not a soup kitchen community organizer. Plenty of charity can indeed and must be done through individual, congregation and community involvement, but I believe the time for us to lead large social programs is over when so many don't give a flying you know what if we do AND seek to erode them and use them as ways to whip up hatred against the Catholic Church.
I say, take the money we use in social programs in the higher developed countries and regions and instead reallocate and devote them to the formation of priests and other religious. Hey, isn't that what everyone is saying we ought to do? "Clean up" all those "bad priests?" Save an altar boy?
Not to minimize at all, as my regular readers know, my zero tolerance for sexual and other abuse or emotionally predatory behavior. So don't waste my time thinking I'm not condemning all abuse in the strongest terms, as I have all along.
But it has come to the point where not a single article about anything good, bad, or neutral can appear in the press without hate mongers commenting about sodomy and rape and buggering and whatever. So I say make them happy and withdraw from all social programs ALL of them in the better developed areas of the world and let them find "alternative providers." Use the social services program funding to "clean up all those pedophiles," you know, all the ones who flock to the Catholic Church. Yep, let's do that. Take the money from the social programs and use them for priest and religious formation. Seriously, as we all know the aging population of faithful religious live in great poverty and often in worse conditions than the people they dedicated their lives to serving.
I'd like to see the Catholic Church just walk away from MANY of the social services programs and instead invest those alms that are donated and income that is generated by the church toward inward, prayerful places and people of sanctity.
Ta ta I say. What say you? I think that would be music to the ears of those who demean all the Catholic Church has done. Win-win, then, no?
Friday, September 12, 2008
Excellent faith/reason/St. Paul article! A+++
http://www.catholicnews.com/data/stories/cns/0804649.htm
St. Paul alive: Scholars tell how his Christian teaching applies now
By Carol Glatz
Catholic News Service
VATICAN CITY (CNS) -- By proclaiming a year dedicated to St. Paul, Pope Benedict XVI has brought attention to a figure who often has been off the church's radar. One noted U.S. Scripture scholar said most priests think preaching the Gospel means focusing on Jesus' biography as recounted by Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. This has meant St. Paul's letters usually got "lip service" by most preachers and scholars, Father Raymond F. Collins told Catholic News Service.
Compounding the problem was that Martin Luther, the 16th-century leader of the Protestant Reformation, drew heavily upon St. Paul's letters to the Romans and Galatians. This led many Catholics to feel Scripture was "Protestant" and St. Paul's letters were "dangerous," said Father Collins.
As a result, the apostle's teachings "didn't really enter into our Catholic thinking," although in recent years the apostle's letters have been getting more attention from Catholic scholars and theologians, he said.
Father Collins, a New Testament scholar retired from The Catholic University of America in Washington, was one of 30 international experts who attended a weeklong Pauline symposium at the Basilica of St. Paul Outside the Walls in early September. The St. Paul's Colloquium is an ecumenical initiative sponsored by the basilica's Benedictine community. Participants have been meeting every two years since 1968.
U.S. Lutheran and New Testament scholar Karl Donfried, a symposium participant, told CNS that the saint's life and teachings are timely examples of dealing with a secularized world and healing a divided Christianity. He said there is "a remarkable parallel" between the multicultural, secularized societies of today and the complex, pagan world of St. Paul.
Despite enormous challenges, St. Paul was "always proclaiming the Gospel -- the good news of what God has done for us in Jesus Christ -- in a very specific situation that is always complex, controverted and difficult," said the retired professor of religion at Smith College in Northampton, Mass.
Father Collins said St. Paul was "a pathfinder," showing today's disciples that they need to find new ways to translate the Gospel message into different cultures and generational divides.
The Pauline year also is meant to focus on the saint's call for Christian unity, and Father Collins and Donfried said St. Paul plays a significant role in fostering ecumenism. Christian unity was a problem in the early church and the first-century saint proposed practical ideas for bringing Christians from Jewish, Greek and Roman cultures together "in a basic unity of faith," Father Collins said.
Donfried said St. Paul warned against the "inherent contradiction between saying on the one hand we are in Christ and yet holding sharply diverging opinions and doing things ... anti-Gospel." The Jewish-born apostle tried to strip away superficial, cultural baggage and drive his audience back to the central questions for all Christians about the Gospel, Jesus and what it means "to be transformed by the Holy Spirit into a new life and not be conformed to the world," he said.
The problems preventing full unity 2,000 years later are similar, he said. "Throughout the history of the church there are cultural ideologies ... that people easily adapt to; they become a kind of 'cultural Christian' insofar as they have a superficial understanding of the Gospel and the church," Donfried said. When people become driven and motivated only by their culture, they risk drowning out Christ's power to transform, he said.
He said the current fixation on social justice or the "political agenda of good works" is obscuring God's true message and impoverishing spirituality.
Churches and the faithful should not be looking to see whether the Democratic or Republican parties resonate more with their beliefs; rather they should be asking, "How does Jesus Christ transform my understanding of the political, social or cultural" world, Donfried said.
While Christians must be concerned about rectifying injustices, he said, they first must be "transformed and informed" by Jesus, who gives people courage.
Pope Benedict has been known to focus on similar ideas.
Donfried recalled once explaining to Jesuit acquaintances why this shy German pope could draw huge crowds at his general audiences, telling them "because he's a good Lutheran." Pope Benedict, he said, is so spiritually and theologically anchored in the Scriptures that he can explain them with great simplicity.
Just how important is St. Paul to the successor of Peter?
Donfried said that when he told then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger several years ago that the colloquium was on the verge of extinction due to lack of funds and a dwindling monastic community at the basilica, the cardinal was adamant it be saved because "the church can't do without the study of Scripture." Donfried credited the pope with saving the colloquium and the basilica's Benedictine community.
Soon after his election in 2005, Pope Benedict confirmed the monks' new Abbot Edmund Power and assigned an archpriest to help the basilica. And where did Pope Benedict head for his first official visit outside the Vatican as pope? To the Basilica of St. Paul Outside the Walls to pray at the tomb of the apostle and pay homage to his legacy of spreading the Gospel.
***
Hope they don't mind I copied the whole article here! Every word is really excellent and I didn't want anyone to miss a thing.
St. Paul alive: Scholars tell how his Christian teaching applies now
By Carol Glatz
Catholic News Service
VATICAN CITY (CNS) -- By proclaiming a year dedicated to St. Paul, Pope Benedict XVI has brought attention to a figure who often has been off the church's radar. One noted U.S. Scripture scholar said most priests think preaching the Gospel means focusing on Jesus' biography as recounted by Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. This has meant St. Paul's letters usually got "lip service" by most preachers and scholars, Father Raymond F. Collins told Catholic News Service.
Compounding the problem was that Martin Luther, the 16th-century leader of the Protestant Reformation, drew heavily upon St. Paul's letters to the Romans and Galatians. This led many Catholics to feel Scripture was "Protestant" and St. Paul's letters were "dangerous," said Father Collins.
As a result, the apostle's teachings "didn't really enter into our Catholic thinking," although in recent years the apostle's letters have been getting more attention from Catholic scholars and theologians, he said.
Father Collins, a New Testament scholar retired from The Catholic University of America in Washington, was one of 30 international experts who attended a weeklong Pauline symposium at the Basilica of St. Paul Outside the Walls in early September. The St. Paul's Colloquium is an ecumenical initiative sponsored by the basilica's Benedictine community. Participants have been meeting every two years since 1968.
U.S. Lutheran and New Testament scholar Karl Donfried, a symposium participant, told CNS that the saint's life and teachings are timely examples of dealing with a secularized world and healing a divided Christianity. He said there is "a remarkable parallel" between the multicultural, secularized societies of today and the complex, pagan world of St. Paul.
Despite enormous challenges, St. Paul was "always proclaiming the Gospel -- the good news of what God has done for us in Jesus Christ -- in a very specific situation that is always complex, controverted and difficult," said the retired professor of religion at Smith College in Northampton, Mass.
Father Collins said St. Paul was "a pathfinder," showing today's disciples that they need to find new ways to translate the Gospel message into different cultures and generational divides.
The Pauline year also is meant to focus on the saint's call for Christian unity, and Father Collins and Donfried said St. Paul plays a significant role in fostering ecumenism. Christian unity was a problem in the early church and the first-century saint proposed practical ideas for bringing Christians from Jewish, Greek and Roman cultures together "in a basic unity of faith," Father Collins said.
Donfried said St. Paul warned against the "inherent contradiction between saying on the one hand we are in Christ and yet holding sharply diverging opinions and doing things ... anti-Gospel." The Jewish-born apostle tried to strip away superficial, cultural baggage and drive his audience back to the central questions for all Christians about the Gospel, Jesus and what it means "to be transformed by the Holy Spirit into a new life and not be conformed to the world," he said.
The problems preventing full unity 2,000 years later are similar, he said. "Throughout the history of the church there are cultural ideologies ... that people easily adapt to; they become a kind of 'cultural Christian' insofar as they have a superficial understanding of the Gospel and the church," Donfried said. When people become driven and motivated only by their culture, they risk drowning out Christ's power to transform, he said.
He said the current fixation on social justice or the "political agenda of good works" is obscuring God's true message and impoverishing spirituality.
Churches and the faithful should not be looking to see whether the Democratic or Republican parties resonate more with their beliefs; rather they should be asking, "How does Jesus Christ transform my understanding of the political, social or cultural" world, Donfried said.
While Christians must be concerned about rectifying injustices, he said, they first must be "transformed and informed" by Jesus, who gives people courage.
Pope Benedict has been known to focus on similar ideas.
Donfried recalled once explaining to Jesuit acquaintances why this shy German pope could draw huge crowds at his general audiences, telling them "because he's a good Lutheran." Pope Benedict, he said, is so spiritually and theologically anchored in the Scriptures that he can explain them with great simplicity.
Just how important is St. Paul to the successor of Peter?
Donfried said that when he told then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger several years ago that the colloquium was on the verge of extinction due to lack of funds and a dwindling monastic community at the basilica, the cardinal was adamant it be saved because "the church can't do without the study of Scripture." Donfried credited the pope with saving the colloquium and the basilica's Benedictine community.
Soon after his election in 2005, Pope Benedict confirmed the monks' new Abbot Edmund Power and assigned an archpriest to help the basilica. And where did Pope Benedict head for his first official visit outside the Vatican as pope? To the Basilica of St. Paul Outside the Walls to pray at the tomb of the apostle and pay homage to his legacy of spreading the Gospel.
***
Hope they don't mind I copied the whole article here! Every word is really excellent and I didn't want anyone to miss a thing.
Monday, July 28, 2008
Shooting debate: quick discernment lesson
Hi. As usual I'm thinking very much of the young people who are living through these times and learning how to weigh the facts and form opinions, exactly when electronic media allows and promotes snap judgments, accusations and conclusions.
I have to make a quick example using the UU church because they themselves are actually raising the subject and of course learning about them is part of everyone's interest in reading this story. I've known about them since college when many of my peers left their church and went to UU because they felt that UU "OK's" whatever imbibing, drug use, sexuality and abortions. This was in the early 1970's and I'm not making a values statement: I'm telling you what my friends told me as they trundled off to the local UU, feeling they could be "spiritual" but still "do their own thing" (to use the popular expression). So I mention this just so people don't say, "Oh, what does MM know about UU?" I know that it was the safe house in my university town for those of my friends who most liked weed, LOL.
Having said that, here is part of the deplorable "dialogue" that is taking place that I must address as an example for my readers to see another challenge in faith and reason discernment. I want to teach you to notice intellectual contradictions. An intellectual, aka logical, contradiction is when someone says one thing, if you believe it, then you can't believe the second thing that they say, because they disagree in some real fundamental way.
So I've noticed that some UU members explain their faith by saying that it pretty much is "bring your own," and they cite that all sorts of believers go there, Christian, Buddhist, pagan, etc. So they present it as everyone is equal and all they care about is goodness and social justice. OK, if one wants a refuge from one's own religion and go to a place of a kind of spiritual social gathering, that's great. But here is the contradiction. They present a kind of "anything is possible" logic in the universe, there may or may not be a creator, that everyone is rewarded in their "journey" "toward" eternal life, etc. But in the same breath I read comments by UU's that state that they "know" that Christianity is incorrect, that Judaism is incorrect, that Islam is incorrect, and so on down the list. So which is it? How do they "know" that every organized religion is wrong? Who told them? How do they know? I mean, OK, say that everyone is welcome, and that it's all a open door groovy love fest of good works and eternal joy. How do you know?
If your head hurts now, so does mine. That's one of the things I least like about humans. They act on one hand like the universe is a great mysterious and all good "unknown," yet on the other hand they somehow "Know" that all organized religion is "wrong." How do they know? How do they know? How do they know?
If they reply to you that it's because flawed humans "wrote" the sacred books, then why would they believe that flawed humans merit eternal bliss in some engine free groovy "everyone is equal" world?
That, dear friends, especially my young friends, is a logical contradiction. They have an open ended faith, except they will tell you that all other faiths are known to be wrong. How do they know? How do they know?
I wish them well, but want to prevent those of you who are reading about them for the first time from falling into a logical error. Many who post on their behalf seem poorly educated in history. For example they will mention Hitler as an example of being 'right wing' (implying in Christian religion) without knowing that he was a pagan (I mean, look at the flags he designed, dummies). So if you dialogue with UU's be aware that they claim on the one hand to be all open ended to the infinite "good" and "equal" possibilities of the "eternal," but they are not open to believing that ANY institutional religion might actually be exactly as it is presented to be. Somehow they have a mysterious knowledge that all religions are "wrong." Hmm? Hmm.
I have to make a quick example using the UU church because they themselves are actually raising the subject and of course learning about them is part of everyone's interest in reading this story. I've known about them since college when many of my peers left their church and went to UU because they felt that UU "OK's" whatever imbibing, drug use, sexuality and abortions. This was in the early 1970's and I'm not making a values statement: I'm telling you what my friends told me as they trundled off to the local UU, feeling they could be "spiritual" but still "do their own thing" (to use the popular expression). So I mention this just so people don't say, "Oh, what does MM know about UU?" I know that it was the safe house in my university town for those of my friends who most liked weed, LOL.
Having said that, here is part of the deplorable "dialogue" that is taking place that I must address as an example for my readers to see another challenge in faith and reason discernment. I want to teach you to notice intellectual contradictions. An intellectual, aka logical, contradiction is when someone says one thing, if you believe it, then you can't believe the second thing that they say, because they disagree in some real fundamental way.
So I've noticed that some UU members explain their faith by saying that it pretty much is "bring your own," and they cite that all sorts of believers go there, Christian, Buddhist, pagan, etc. So they present it as everyone is equal and all they care about is goodness and social justice. OK, if one wants a refuge from one's own religion and go to a place of a kind of spiritual social gathering, that's great. But here is the contradiction. They present a kind of "anything is possible" logic in the universe, there may or may not be a creator, that everyone is rewarded in their "journey" "toward" eternal life, etc. But in the same breath I read comments by UU's that state that they "know" that Christianity is incorrect, that Judaism is incorrect, that Islam is incorrect, and so on down the list. So which is it? How do they "know" that every organized religion is wrong? Who told them? How do they know? I mean, OK, say that everyone is welcome, and that it's all a open door groovy love fest of good works and eternal joy. How do you know?
If your head hurts now, so does mine. That's one of the things I least like about humans. They act on one hand like the universe is a great mysterious and all good "unknown," yet on the other hand they somehow "Know" that all organized religion is "wrong." How do they know? How do they know? How do they know?
If they reply to you that it's because flawed humans "wrote" the sacred books, then why would they believe that flawed humans merit eternal bliss in some engine free groovy "everyone is equal" world?
That, dear friends, especially my young friends, is a logical contradiction. They have an open ended faith, except they will tell you that all other faiths are known to be wrong. How do they know? How do they know?
I wish them well, but want to prevent those of you who are reading about them for the first time from falling into a logical error. Many who post on their behalf seem poorly educated in history. For example they will mention Hitler as an example of being 'right wing' (implying in Christian religion) without knowing that he was a pagan (I mean, look at the flags he designed, dummies). So if you dialogue with UU's be aware that they claim on the one hand to be all open ended to the infinite "good" and "equal" possibilities of the "eternal," but they are not open to believing that ANY institutional religion might actually be exactly as it is presented to be. Somehow they have a mysterious knowledge that all religions are "wrong." Hmm? Hmm.
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