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VATICAN CITY, DEC. 16, 2009 (Zenit.org).- A 12th-century scholar has a lesson for today on what makes for fair and equal treatment in law, Benedict XVI says.The Pope proposed today during the general audience the teaching of John of Salisbury, an English theologian and philosopher who served as bishop of Chartres, France, from 1176 until he died in 1180.The Holy Father explained how John taught that "there also exists an objective and immutable truth, whose origin is God, accessible to human reason. This truth regards practical and social actions. This is a natural law, from which human laws and political...

Pontius Pilate would feel very much at home in our culture. His cynical question — “What is truth?” (Jn 18:38) — captures the prevailing mindset of our day. It provides a three-word summary of relativism — the view that objective truth does not exist, that there is not objective “right” or “wrong” about human behavior. Relativism refuses to limit or define human behavior. All is relative and depends on the situation, the culture, the person, etc.Although often depicted as a courageous rebellion against forces of intolerance and persecution, relativism is really cowardice. Because truth requires something of us. Pontius Pilate...

Here are the facts concerning the Roman Polanski case: Polanski gave a Quaalude to a 13 year-old child, instructed her to get into a Jacuzzi naked, refused to take her home when she asked, performed oral sex on her as she asked him to stop, raped her (no, not the “statutory” kind, the “forcible” kind), and sodomized her. In a plea bargain Polanski pled to unlawful sex with a minor. As is common knowledge, Polanski has his defenders because he has made some terrific movies. For example, critic Tom Shales says: “There is, apparently, more to this crime than it...

Archbishop Mauro Piacenza, Secretary of the Congregation for Clergy Rome, Italy, Sep 16, 2009 / 12:27 pm (CNA).- The secretary of the Congregation for the Clergy, Archbishop Mauro Piacenza, said this week the proclamation of the word of God is an undeniable task that priests must carry out with dignity and wisdom, to show Christ to others. It is a mission that leaves no room for subjective views of the Lord or relativism, he said.In an article published by L'Osservatore Romano, the archbishop said, "No priest proclaims himself or his own ideas, nor his personal or subjective interpretations of...

As we approach the end of the first decade of the first century of the third millennium of the Christian Era, the corporate members of the new and influential Partnership for 21st Century Skills have begun to look beyond and behind and beneath their earlier commitment to the education of our students in critical thinking, collaborative problem solving, and global awareness. It has become obvious to industry leaders that more fundamental than all these new student skills for success in the business world is really Critical Likability. While it may be useful for new employees to know that the world...

In the Aristotelian tradition, virtue stands in the middle, between two extremes, a too much and a too little. Aristotle thought that a non-arbitrary middle could be found. Prudence arrived at it, but did not constitute it. Aristotle's good man lived virtuously, not just any way. Our actions were judged midst the actual circumstances in which we lived our lives. But suppose I have an argument about what is half of thirty. One man says it is twenty, the other twenty-five. Thus, their mean is twenty-two and a half. But all three views are wrong, though twenty is closer...

We usually take truth for granted in everyday life. We are hurt by lies (when we discover them). It helps when the doctor correctly diagnoses our illness. Truth matters. Freedom is something else again. On the one hand truth seems to limit our options, while on the other hand no adult wants to be relying on illusions. Who is free? A good man in jail or a rich playboy hooked on alcohol and drugs? Perhaps each is imprisoned in a different way. Should we be free to break our solemn commitments? Are we free to break the ten commandments? No...

Archbishop Francisco Gil Helin Madrid, Spain, Jun 1, 2009 / 08:39 pm (CNA).- Archbishop Francisco Gil Hellin of Burgos, Spain said last week that it has become increasingly evident that both the Catholic Church and Pope Benedict XVI are confronting the “center of the secular world, made up of significant elements of the European Union, the United Nations, and more recently, the United States.” “This center has shown itself incapable of accepting anything that is not part of its own values. And thus, despite scientific proof, the Pope has been irrationally criticized in the name of reason, and the...

Higher Education and the Truth Address to Graduating Class of the University of the Incarnate Word San Antonio, Texas May 9, 2009 The Most Rev. José H. Gomez, S.T.D. Archbishop of San Antonio Congratulations, my friends! This is a very proud day for you. And I am honored that you have asked me to share it with you and your families. First of all, I would like to thank Dr. Agnese and the Board of Trustees of the University of the Incarnate Word for granting me the Honoris Causa degree of Doctor of Humane Letters. It is an unexpected honor...

At the time of British Prime Minister Gordon Brown's visit to Washington, London took umbrage at an Obama official's off-the-record sneer to a Fleet Street reporter that "there's nothing special about Britain. You're just the same as the other 190 countries in the world. You shouldn't expect special treatment." Andrew C. McCarthy of National Review made the sharp observation that, never mind the British, this was how the administration felt about its own country, too: America is just the same as the other 190 countries in the world. In Europe, the president was asked if he believed in American exceptionalism,...

The Books of Absolutes: A Critique of Relativism and a Defence of Universals William D. Gairdner McGill-Queen’s University Press Recommendation: Read Let’s play spot the flaw. In 1994, professor Mark Glazer said, “Cultural relativism in anthropology is a key methodological concept which is universally accepted within the discipline.” (It’s the very first sentence after the link.) Don’t have it yet? Then let’s remind ourselves of what cultural relativism means: “Cultural relativism is the view that all beliefs are equally valid and that truth itself is relative, depending on the situation, environment, and individual.” You surely have it by now, so...

In his homily prior to the convening of the papal conclave where he was be chosen to fill the Chair of Peter, then Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger gave us a prophetic insight into the challenges of the age: “How many winds of doctrine we have known in recent decades, how many ideological currents, how many ways of thinking... The small boat of thought of many Christians has often been tossed about by these waves - thrown from one extreme to the other: from Marxism to liberalism, even to libertinism; from collectivism to radical individualism; from atheism to a vague religious mysticism;...

Birds fly, tortoises crawl and politicians lie, particularly when they feel cornered. That's the natural order of things. Big deal. I don't waste too much indignation on it. But what irks me, and should concern us all, is not the everyday disregard for this or that particular truth but the very assault on the idea that there is such a thing as truth at all. ~ snip ~ As believers in the old-fashioned idea of truth, conservatives generally have found postmodernism distasteful and have vociferously protested its emergence.

Show me a person who cannot distinguish cleverness from wisdom or a good brain from a good heart, and I will show you somebody who is a fool.These words to live by returned to mind a few weeks back when I read a complaint piece on Apocalypto by a scholar specializing in Mayan civilization. She protested: “They’re shown as these extremely barbaric people, when in fact, the Maya were a very sophisticated culture.”A quote like this can only mean that somewhere in higher education impressionable minds are being formed by somebody who knows all about the Mayans — and nothing...

In an appearance on the NBC program Meet the Press on Sunday, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, a self-professed Catholic, denied that the Catholic Church condemns abortion. Referring to Barack Obama's now-notorious answer to Pastor Rick Warren to the question of when life begins, Meet the Press moderator Tom Brokaw asked Pelosi, "Senator Obama saying the question of when life begins is above his pay grade…If he were to come to you and say, 'Help me out here, Madame Speaker. When does life begin?' what would you tell him?" Pelosi responded by sidestepping the question, appealing to her Catholic faith as...

For many liberal Catholics, July 25, 1968 was the day the music died. Pope Paul VI's encyclical Humanae Vitae, published 40 years ago today, reaffirmed Catholicism's absolute ban on birth control. Coming on the heels of the Second Vatican Council's unprecedented opening of the Church to modernity three years earlier, the Vatican's decision to stand by a doctrine that ever fewer Catholics were obeying would reverberate far beyond the bedroom. Progressives saw the encyclical as the ultimate proof that the Church was bound to remain out of touch with contemporary reality. Traditionalists, instead, can mark it as the beginning of...

Bruce Reyes-Chow "PCUSA" is a "mainline" denomination of 2.3 million members. This is the spirit of the times (zeitgeist): certainly not the Holy Spirit. According to a story from the Catholic News Agency: San Jose, CA., Jul 8, 2008 / 11:57 pm (CNA).- Reaction continues to the decisions of the 218th General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church USA (PCUSA), which took place between June 21 and June 28. The assembly nullified proscriptions against sexual behavior outside of marriage and called for a vote to delete the church’s constitutional standard requiring fidelity in marriage and chastity in singleness. It also...

Multicultural Censorship by: Emily Miller, June 13, 2008 Historian and author Victor Davis Hanson argued in a lecture addressed to the Heritage Foundation that there is a new narrative defining the debate between security and liberty that is more characteristic of a post-9/11-plus-hindsight world. Hanson suggested that the government is not infringing upon American individual rights, as was generally feared in the past, but rather Americans themselves pose the greatest threat to their freedom of speech by practicing self-censorship. This consequently stifles thought and discourages freedom of expression. “Right now at this time, there is a collective mood in the...

Commentary - Peter Schweizer: Conservatives more honest than liberals? Jun 2, 2008 3:00 AM (10 days ago) by Peter Schweizer, The Examiner The headline may seem like a trick question — even a dangerous one — to ask during an election year. And notice, please, that I didn’t ask whether certain politicians are more honest than others. (Politicians are a different species altogether.) Yet there is a striking gap between the manner in which liberals and conservatives address the issue of honesty. Consider these results: Is it OK to cheat on your taxes? A total of 57 percent of those...

Relativists claim that what is truth for one person may not be truth for another person, or what may be true for one may not be true for another. If truth is relative to one's point-of-view, who can say what is or isn't politically correct speech? Within American society who could say what is or isn't politically correct to say, if truth (and the truth of the matter even concerning political correctness) was relative to one's point-of-view? A relativist could not say that what was true for them (in terms of what is or isn't politically correct to say) would...

"Either relativism is a genuine theory in which a real assertion is made, or else it isn't. But any attempt to assert relativism without relying on just-plain truth [absolute] would inevitably fail, because it would generate an infinite regress. And, of course, any assertion of relativism that does not rely on just-plain truth would be-self defeating. So it looks like any apparent assertion of relativism is either self-defeating or else is not a real assertion, but something more like an empty slogan." (Jubien, Michael. Contemporary Metaphysics. Cambridge, Mass.: Blackwell, 1997) "The only way the relativist can avoid the painful dilemma...

Postmodernism is a worldview characterized by a belief in the lack of an objective truth, and wehich asserts that assertions of objective knowledge are essentially impossible. A strong part of postmodernist thought is an intentional departure from traditional approaches that had previously been dominant... Some postmodernist idea are: Truth is a "social construct," rather than objectively provable. There is no superior culture; Western culture is no better than any other (see cultural relativism)...

Your Eminence, Dear Brother Bishops, Dear Young Friends,"Proclaim the Lord Christ … and always have your answer ready for people who ask the reason for the hope that is within you" (1 Pet 3:15). With these words from the First Letter of Peter I greet each of you with heartfelt affection. I thank Cardinal Egan for his kind words of welcome and I also thank the representatives chosen from among you for their gestures of welcome. To Bishop Walsh, Rector of Saint Joseph Seminary, staff and seminarians, I offer my special greetings and gratitude. Young friends, I am very...

Both his fans and his critics hail Bill Clinton as the first postmodern president. In his personal constructions of truth and morality, his continual re-invention of himself, and his insistence that even the word "is" depends upon your interpretation, President Clinton became a poster boy for the relativistic worldview. Now Hillary Clinton is continuing her husband's political legacy. The most flagrant example of Mrs. Clinton's embrace of contemporary philosophy is her description of a trip to Bosnia in which she had to duck sniper fire, landing with no ceremony into a war zone and running from the airplane with her...

What should our reaction be when others pray for our conversion?  There recently was a story about a German Jewish leader, Charlotte Knobloch, who criticized Pope Benedict XVI for allowing a traditional Easter prayer that calls for the conversion of the Jewish people.  Her reaction raises an interesting issue, as praying for conversion isn't unique to Catholics any more that taking offense to it is unique to Jews.  And to start this topic off, I'd like to pose a question: Who do you think would be more likely to take umbrage at being the object of such a supplication,...

What can we deduce about the state of mind of those who rally, sometimes with remarkable fervor, behind a man they know nothing about? Abdication of reason. In the Emory Wheel, the student newspaper of Emory College, Josh Prywes reported, “Pollster Frank Luntz asked college students at a recent focus group to name the candidate they were going to vote for. All of them said Obama, but when Luntz followed up by asking them to name a single accomplishment of the senator, they couldn’t name one. Nobody could name a single accomplishment that Senator Obama has achieved” (emphasis mine throughout)....

The theme of this assignment is, why should we care about politics and involve ourselves in the political process. I would say that the preservation of the state of liberty is about as good as it gets. We must realise that freedom isn’t free, that ideas have consequences (especially bad ones), and that liberty requires a permanent state of vigilance against forced and unforced error.

During the days following the catastrophic terrorist events of September 11, 2001, President George W. Bush called for a national day of prayer. He urged people of all faiths to pray for America. Interfaith religious services were televised from the National Cathedral in Washington, D.C. and from Yankee Stadium in New York. These services included clerics from Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, and Hinduism. They offered prayers to the God collectively addressed as "the God of Abraham, the God of Muhammad, and the Father of Jesus Christ." Popular television personality Oprah Winfrey led the service held in New York City and...

'Multiculturalism threatens democracy' Associated Press , THE JERUSALEM POST Oct. 20, 2007 Multiculturalism promotes segregation, stifles free speech and threatens liberal democracy, Britain's top Jewish official warned in extracts from his book published Saturday. Jonathan Sacks, Britain's chief rabbi, defined multiculturalism as an attempt to affirm Britain's diverse communities and make ethnic and religious minorities more appreciated and respected. But in his book, "The Home We Build Together: Recreating Society," he said the movement had run its course. "Multiculturalism has led not to integration but to segregation," Sacks wrote in his book, an extract of which was published in the...

Here we go again, another Ann Coulter media blowup. This time, however, there is a serious point worth drawing from the episode. Coulter’s latest contested comments were delivered on CNBC to Donny Deutsch on his show The Big Idea. She offered the opinion that Jews need to be “perfected” by becoming Christians. Deutsch, who is Jewish, spluttered about “how hateful, how anti-Semitic” this idea is. Yet from a certain perspective — which is not my own, but as an Orthodox Jew I find reasonable coming from her — she’s right. I first became aware of the Deutsch exchange by listening...

VATICAN, October 5, 2007 (CWNews.com/LifeSiteNews.com) - By denying the existence of natural law, secularism is undermining the very foundations of democratic society, Pope Benedict XVI argued in an October 5 private audience with members of the International Theological Commission. Disregard for natural law, the Holy Father said, has caused "a crisis for human-- even more for Christian-- civilization." In response to that crisis, he continued, Church leaders should mobilize "both lay people and followers of religions other than Christianity" to reclaim a common moral tradition. The International Theological Commission had gathered in Rome this week to discuss a forthcoming document...

Quebec Mandates Relativistic Ethical and Religious Education For All Students in Province Program includes positive presentation of homosexual families and requires children to question their own religious upbringing By John-Henry Westen QUEBEC CITY, October 4, 2007 (LifeSiteNews.com) - As of the beginning of the 2008 school year, all students in the province of Quebec whether in public school, private school or even homeschooled will be mandated to take a program on "Ethics and Religious Culture" which runs from grade one till the end of high school.  The program is completely relativistic and includes positive presentation of homosexual families and requires...

Russian Orthodox Patriarch Explains Stand on Homosexuality to Council of Europe "Love the Sinner, Hate the Sin" By John-Henry Westen STRASBOURG, October 3, 2007 (LifeSiteNews.com) - In his first visit to the Council of Europe on a     mission to discuss inter-religious dialogue, the head of the Russian Orthodox Church, Patriarch Alexy II, gave a spirited defence of Christian morality. He noted that the notion of human rights in Europe stems, at least in part from Christian morality. "Yet today there occurs a break between human rights and morality, and this break threatens the European civilization," he warned. "We can see...

SHOCKER: Catholic Georgetown U. Will Now Fund Law Students to Lobby for Abortion Oldest Catholic university in U.S. By John-Henry Westen WASHINGTON, DC, September 26, 2007 (LifeSiteNews.com) - A change of policy at Georgetown University Law Center will permit the university - which is the oldest Catholic university in the nation - to give grants to students who lobby for abortion for agencies such as Planned Parenthood.   The Hoya, the Georgetown University newspaper, reports on its front page today about the policy change. The policy change was announced September 7 by Law Center Dean T. Alexander Aleinikoff in a letter...

Peruvian Cardinal to Health Minister: "Abortion is Murder" Adds "We cannot remain in silence to avoid problems, and those children have every right to live" By Matthew Cullinan Hoffman LIMA, September 11, 2007 (LifeSiteNews.com) - The Cardinal Archbishop of Lima, Peru, gave a stinging sermon Sunday stating that abortion "is murder and those who commit it are murderers", as Peru's health minister Carlos Vallejos sat in the pews. Although Vallejos claims to be pro-life, he supports the abortifacient morning after pill and has cooperated with efforts to normalize "therapeutic abortions" in Peru. "It is cowardice on the part of contemporary...

There are many natural scientists, and especially physicists, who continue to reject the notion that the disciplines concerned with social and cultural criticism can have anything to contribute, except perhaps peripherally, to their research. Still less are they receptive to the idea that the very foundations of their worldview must be revised or rebuilt in the light of such criticism. Rather, they cling to the dogma imposed by the long post-Enlightenment hegemony over the Western intellectual outlook, which can be summarized briefly as follows: that there exists an external world, whose properties are independent of any individual human being and...

The God that whined Barbara Kay, National Post Published: Wednesday, July 25, 2007 Back in the day, the many atheists I knew went about their unbelieving lives in a quietly sardonic, but non-combative way: They'd abandoned organized religion, but sought no quarrel with those who stayed. They explained their non-belief to their children, but let them join the boy scouts. Everything old is new again, but ? different. Yesterday's live-and-let-live atheism has morphed into today's truculent "atheism with attitude," where God is not only dead, but --postmodern glee having replaced Nietszchean gloom regarding His demise -- with good riddance...

Roman Catholics who feel they're being persecuted now may view as more of the same the inevitable criticism of the pope's recent pronouncement that Catholicism is the one true faith. Perhaps some introspection wouldn't hurt. Last week, Pope Benedict XVI put his stamp of approval on a Vatican document that addressed the "defects" of other Christian traditions and asserted Catholicism's place as the lone highway to heaven. "Christ 'established here on earth' only one Church," the document read. Other denominations "cannot, according to Catholic doctrine, be called 'churches' in the proper sense," because they cannot trace their original leaders back...

Pope Benedict XVI has drawn fire from Protestants worldwide for saying in early July of 2007, that they are not part of the “true church.” Protestants have weighed in and the response has included everything from disappointment to anger.

I was dismayed a while back when I learned that a Barna survey found that “less than one out of every ten churched teenagers has a biblical worldview.” But a survey is just that, a survey. Things couldn’t be that bad, could they? Well, I recently heard a shocking story that vividly illustrates just how far relativism has infected the Church—to the point where Christian kids balk at the idea that Christianity would claim to be, of all things, true. Four years ago, the BreakPoint staff and I launched Centurions, an intensive, year-long education program designed to equip 100 people...

A North Carolina judge has ruled that any religious text can be used to swear in a witness or juror in the state's courtrooms, not just the Bible. State law currently allows witnesses preparing to testify in court to take their oath in three ways: by laying a hand over "the Holy Scriptures," by saying "so help me God" without the use of a religious book, or by an affirmation using no religious symbols. The American Civil Liberties Union sued on behalf of a Muslim woman who wasn't allowed to take her oath on the Quran.

Relativism has made liberal openness appear weak, empty and repugnant compared with the clarity of dogma I don't usually consider either the Ministry of Defence or the Vatican to be prescient founts of wisdom. But when two such different oracles issue remarkably similar warnings, you have to take notice. Earlier this week it was revealed in this newspaper how the MoD believes that "the trend towards moral relativism and increasingly pragmatic values" was causing more and more people to seek "more rigid belief systems, including religious orthodoxy and doctrinaire political ideologies, such as popularism and Marxism". Flash back to 2004...

The New Soviet Union: America and the West January 23, 2007 Vox Populi By Linda Kimball In “The Historical Roots of ‘Political Correctness,’ author Raymond V. Raehn observed that America is “dominated by an alien system of beliefs, attitudes, and values that we have come to know as ‘Political Correctness.’ Political Correctness seeks to impose a uniformity of thought and behavior on all Americans and is therefore totalitarian in nature. Its roots lie in a version of Marxism which seeks a radical inversion of the traditional culture in order to create a social revolution.” (www.freecongress.org) Political Correctness and Multiculturalism are...

I had an opportunity last weekend to take a mental snapshot of the Jewish liberal species at Limmud New York, a learning conference held at the Friar Tuck Convention Center in Catskill, N.Y. Of some 900 people present for the beautifully organized smorgasbord of presentations on religious, political and other topics, I was probably one of about five Republicans. I was also among the 100 or so speakers. The slogan of the multi-denominational event, a four-day party for Jewish intellectuals, was “Jewish Learning Without Limits.” The buzzword was “pluralism,” but what stood out was the limitations of liberal tolerance. Don’t...

There used to be a time when the left proudly carried the banner of reason and science; and disdainfully viewed religion as a superstition or at best an antiquated myth. In the name of science they advanced an agenda on several fronts. In economics, central planning was described as a rational systematic alternative to the chaotic free-for-all of the market. In human relations, what was previously viewed as a moral failing was now a condition amenable to social engineering. Social science, we were assured there was such a thing, would provide the guidance and justification for the socialistic regulations required...

The embryonic stem cell research debate is remarkable because neither side—pro-life nor pro-abortion—seems to fully understand the moral logic of its views.  Presumably, people who are pro-life hold their views for a reason and are not just emoting or idealogues. The same could be said of pro-choicers. I’ve long suspected that’s not always the case, though. The recent debate about embryonic stem cell research (ESCR) confirms my doubts. Dr. Anthony Atala, head of Wake Forest's regenerative medicine institute, is photographed in his research lab at Piedmont Triad Research Park in Winston-Salem, NC, Friday, Jan. 5, 2007. Scientists reported Sunday they...

Truth scarce in information overload By SALIM MANSUR Toronto Sun Saturday, November 4, 2006 T.S. Eliot was one of the 20th century's most significant and influential poets. Eliot was born in 1888 in St. Louis, Mo., and became a naturalized British citizen when he settled in London before the outbreak of the First World War. Eliot, who died in 1965, gave voice to a range of modern themes, from existential despair to the search for meaning in life, when politics and science -- fascism and the A-bomb -- emptied it for many of belief in traditional faiths. GREAT POETRY...

Are British parents prepared to be 24-7 role models for their children? They’d better be, since British schools have apparently decided to opt out of a large part of their previous responsibilities for educating students. It all started when a re-wording of the national curriculum statement revealed that the education establishment was no longer bound by pesky moral absolutes like right and wrong. Ostensibly created to “slim down” the rules and regs, the working draft’s new wording eliminated a previous statement saying that “the school curriculum should pass on enduring values. . .(and) develop principles for distinguishing between right and...

A few years ago, a professor at Pasadena City College led a class discussion on the famous story “The Lottery.” In the story, a seemingly normal village carries out a bizarre ritual involving human sacrifice. The professor, Kay Haugaard, had taught the story many times over the years and was anticipating the usual shocked reactions from her students. Instead, she found that she was teaching a room full of moral relativists who thought that the ritual might be all right “if it’s a part of a person’s culture . . . and if it has worked for them.” To Haugaard’s...

The noted blogger Fjordman is filing this report via Gates of Vienna. From Citizen to Subject — The Rule of Experts and the Rise of Transnational Anti-DemocratsBy Baron Bodissey At the end of the Cold War, Francis Fukuyama pronounced that we had arrived at “The End of History”, and that capitalism and liberal democracy would now be the only global system left. But when I look at Europe today, I see democracies under threat because of an elaborate Eurabian bureaucracy and Islamic fanaticism. I see countries unwilling or unable to defend themselves against massive immigration/colonization. Has democracy become too soft...