The Culture of death

I don't cite Richard Neuhaus too often, but sometimes it's impossible not to. In today's FT blog, his recent address to a Right to Life conference includes this gem:

The culture of death is an idea before it is a deed. I expect many of us here, perhaps most of us here, can remember when we were first encountered by the idea. For me, it was in the 1960s when I was pastor of a very poor, very black, inner city parish in Brooklyn, New York. I had read that week an article by Ashley Montagu of Princeton University on what he called “A Life Worth Living.” He listed the qualifications for a life worth living: good health, a stable family, economic security, educational opportunity, the prospect of a satisfying career to realize the fullness of one’s potential. These were among the measures of what was called “a life worth living.”

And I remember vividly, as though it were yesterday, looking out the next Sunday morning at the congregation of St. John the Evangelist and seeing all those older faces creased by hardship endured and injustice afflicted, and yet radiating hope undimmed and love unconquered. And I saw that day the younger faces of children deprived of most, if not all, of those qualifications on Prof. Montagu’s list. And it struck me then, like a bolt of lightning, a bolt of lightning that illuminated our moral and cultural moment, that Prof. Montagu and those of like mind believed that the people of St. John the Evangelist—people whom I knew and had come to love as people of faith and kindness and endurance and, by the grace of God, hope unvanquished—it struck me then that, by the criteria of the privileged and enlightened, none of these my people had a life worth living. In that moment, I knew that a great evil was afoot. The culture of death is an idea before it is a deed.

Theo-politics lite - Milbank et al

This post from the Ipsum Esse blog is intriguing for its' discussion of the mixture of conservative and socialist political orientations within a distinctly Christian set of commitments. The immediate point of reference is British politics, but the ramifications are far broader in scope.

Quote of the Day

"In recognizing the humanity of our fellow beings, we pay ourselves the highest tribute."
- U.S. justice Thurgood Marshall (1908 - 1993)

An Anti-dote to the Dis-"order of canada"

Written by a formerly pro-choice woman who walks the reader through her conversions step-by step. Wonderful.