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Recent Articles
Category Archives: Religion
Running with Muhammad Ali
I used to live in the Hyde Park area of Chicago, which is right on Lake Michigan. One early chilly, windy Sunday morning I was running south along Lake Shore Drive. LSD was to my right and I noticed occasional … Continue reading
Posted in Diversity and Race, Religion
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U.N. Security Council Vote on the Palestinian State and the Samantha Power Puzzle
The treatment of the Palestinians is one of the great crimes in modern history. A people dispossessed by zionism and reduced to penury and colonialism. The right of Israel to exist is not open to question or debate, but the … Continue reading
Posted in External Affairs, Religion
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Rerum Novarum on Unions: A Right that is Under Assault by Roman Catholic Educational Leaders
Leo XIII’s, 1891 papal encyclical, Rerum Novarum constitutes a cautious but affirmative statement for workers’ rights. Rerum Novarum does not go far enough in my opinion due to its hostility to socialism and the need to have greater government-managed economic … Continue reading
Posted in Academia/Academic Freedom, Religion
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John Garvey, President of Censured Catholic University of America, Hits SXU Adjuncts, Needs to Read Rerum Novarum
This blog post has been posted by Academe, with additional links, on the American Association of University Professors official blog: John Garvey, president of censured Catholic University of America (CUA), a pontifical university that has a dismal record of aggressively promoting conformity to … Continue reading
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Only Racists and Bigots, Such As Anti-Defamation League, Would Oppose Mosque in Lower Manhattan
It’s true. This country has not learned from its past. I live in a community in Chicago’s suburbs that refused to allow a mosque to be built in 2000 and beyond. Our mayor courageously defended it but the Muslim community … Continue reading
Posted in Politics/Music/Culture, Religion
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Update: Good Jesuit, Bad Jesuit Blog Misrepresentation of HNN Article on Dr Zinn and Fr. Berrigan
Good Jesuit, Bad Jesuit gratuitously and disgracefully refers to the late Dr Zinn in its title as a “Notorious Communist” and deliberately omits that portion of my article in which that affiliation is denied. I give precise documentation that Dr Zinn … Continue reading
Posted in Politics/Music/Culture, Religion
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Neo-Jesuit Website Podcasts HNN Article on Dr. Zinn and F.B.I. Witchhunt
A website, called Good Jesuit, Bad Jesuit has added various accoutrements to my HNN article on the legacy of Dr. Howard Zinn and the execrable, recently released F.B.I. files: “The People’s Historian and the F.B.I. Zinn Files.” 1) They inserted … Continue reading
Posted in Politics/Music/Culture, Religion
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The Hypocrisy of Christopher Hitchens’s Question for Pope Benedict
This post appeared in the Washington Post blog today. He is referring to Cardinal Bernard Law who resigned as archbishop of Boston in 2002 and was involved in a series of sex scandals involving underage youth. Mr Hitchens wrote the … Continue reading
Posted in Iraq, Af-Pak War, Religion
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Karl Marx on Religion and Hegel’s Philosophy of Right
Dr Karl Marx and quotation from The Communist Manifesto (1848). In the only issue of the Paris-based Deutsch-Französische Jahrbücher, there appeared a monumental series of articles by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. This 1844 publication included Marx’s Letter to Feuerbach, On the … Continue reading
Posted in Freedom & Socialism, Religion
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Professor Kirstein’s Additional Commentary and The New York Times Joining Muslim World Call for Papal Apology
While I commented in the post below on the pope's apparent lack of ecumenism and frankly knowledge of Islam, it is important not to take his provocative quotation out of context. This is a greater contextual illustration of Pope Benedict XVI address in Germany … Continue reading
Posted in External Affairs, Religion
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Pope Criticised for Quoting Anti-Muslim Remarks
Pope Benedict XVI, while visiting his native Germany for six days, gave a speech on Tuesday, September 12, 2006 at the University of Regensburg, entitled "Faith, Reason and the University: Memories and Reflections." He appeared to target Islam as a violent … Continue reading
Posted in External Affairs, Religion
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Was there a Pope Joan Disguised as a Man? Inquiring Minds Want to Know.
Some believe there was a 9th century German pope who was a woman. According to Ms Mary Malone, a former nun, there were 12-year old popes and 5-year old archbishops at one time so read this ABC News account and … Continue reading
Posted in Religion
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Soldiers Don’t Want to Fight: It is their Governments. They wanted peace on Christmas Eve/Day December 24-25, 1914.
How soldiers dared to be human and their commanders wanted them to kill and not love each other. The extraordinary Christmas Day Truce 1914 when soldiers reached out and celebrated Christmas together even though German and English. The Truce of … Continue reading
Posted in External Affairs, Religion
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The Meaning of Christmas
Date: Thu, 8 Dec 2005 15:54:19 -0500 (EST) From: Reverend Barry Lynn, executive director, Americans United for Separation of Church and State AN OPEN LETTER TO JERRY FALWELL Dear Jerry: Here’s some news: There is no “war on Christmas!” I’ve … Continue reading
Posted in Religion
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Academic Freedom and Evolution
The effort to purge the teaching of evolution in biology classes is a kind of American Wahhabism: An effort to sneak religious instruction, in the dress of secular reasoning, into science courses. The threat to academic freedom is that professors … Continue reading
Posted in Academia/Academic Freedom, Religion
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A Roman Catholic Supreme Court Majority and Exclusion of Protestants
updated: May 19, 2010 There have been twelve Roman Catholics that have served on the Supreme Court. Six of those twelve currently serve on the court. President Barack Hussein Obama’s first Supreme Court replacement for Mr Justice David Souter, former Appellate … Continue reading
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Just War: Iraq #7 “Discrimination†Part Two or why US Army General Barry McCaffrey {ret} is a War Criminal
A significant component of this jus in bello categorisation of Just War Doctrine concentrates on strategy and tactics. Those who do not make war should not have war made upon them. The military and its acolytes in Vietnam and during … Continue reading
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Just War: Iraq #6 “Discrimination” Part One
The other half or main category of the Just War Doctrine as initially posited by St Augustine is jus in bello. This refers to conduct in war. In order for just war doctrine to pass the test of morality and … Continue reading
Posted in Iraq, Af-Pak War, Religion
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Just War: Iraq #5 “Right Intentions”
This component of Just War doctrine, as initially developed in the 4th Century, After the Common Era, is similar to Just Cause as articulated in the series of Jus Ad Bellum requirements as enunciated below. During the conflict, there must … Continue reading
Posted in Iraq, Af-Pak War, Religion
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Just War: Iraq #4 “Just Cause†(Military Personnel Reflections)
Just War Doctrine requires that war must be aimed at confronting a “real and certain injury.” Iraq was no threat to the U.S. It had not been able in the No-Fly-Zone-War to interdict even one British or American warplane. Not … Continue reading
Posted in Iraq, Af-Pak War, Religion
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Just War: Iraq #3 “Proportionality”
Just War Doctrine requires in Jus Ad Bellum, or the legitimacy of going to war, that warrior nations consider the consequences of their actions. Specifically, will the violence and death that will result from war–the means–justify the alleged positive ends … Continue reading
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Just War: Iraq #2 “Competent Authorityâ€
This has always been one of the more ambiguous areas of Roman Catholic Just War doctrine that began with the magisterial writings of St Augustine and St Thomas Aquinas. Basically it refers to war being the product of constitutional or … Continue reading
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Just War: Iraq #1 “War As A Last Resort”
One of the requisites of Just War is that war should eventuate only as a last resort. In the case of Iraq, Hans Blix’s inspectors were still doing their work. They were encountering little resistance. While certainly inspectors could not … Continue reading
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Is There a God? What About Creation? Part II
Probably not in terms of a direct capacity to communicate with or verify the presence of. Probably not even in terms of an omnipotent being that is transmogrified from human to deity and observes all things simultaneously. Probably not in … Continue reading
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Motherhood is Optional: Getting an Abortion in Arkansas
September 18, 2005 Under Din of Abortion Debate, an Experience Shared Quietly By JOHN LELAND New York Times LITTLE ROCK, Ark. – At Little Rock Family Planning Services, the women filed in without making eye contact, a demographic that remains … Continue reading
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Turn Turn Turn
Words-adapted from the bible, Ecclesiastes Music-Pete Seeger To everything (turn, turn, turn) There is a season (turn, turn, turn) And a time for every purpose, under heaven A time to be born, a time to die A time to plant, … Continue reading
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Karl Marx: Is there a God?
In classical Marxism, the notion of a god is dismissed as a human-made invention. Greatly influenced by the transformational criticism of Ludwig von Feuerbach, The Essence of Christianity, Marxists believed that humans created god and not the reverse. The only … Continue reading
Posted in Freedom & Socialism, Religion
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Karl Marx: Religion “is the opium of the people”
Marx wrote in the Contribution to the Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right that religion “is the opium of the people.†By this he meant it was a tool of ideology used by capital to enslave and narcotise the proletariat. … Continue reading
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Ex Corde Ecclesiae and Mandatum
While the American bishops have not enforced the mandatum, it is basically a licensing to teach theology. Only Roman Catholic theologians who teach at a Roman Catholic university are required to receive one from the local ordinary. The purpose of … Continue reading
Posted in Academia/Academic Freedom, Religion
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