...because come to find out, if I were, then this would have happened:
Me: I see you're interested in a business loan.
Applicant: Yes, I'd like a loan so I can open up a Citgo gas station right here in your home town.
Me: Well, that sounds pretty reasonable. Let me ask you this, though, before we move forward--there are already quite a few gas stations here. What is it about your station that will be different than all the others? In other words, what makes your station special enough to warrant a loan from us?
Applicant: Oh, that's easy. Now--check this out--in my gas station, we won't sell any coffee. It'll be like a gas station--but without the coffee!
And then I would have blown up the earth.
Tuesday, July 20, 2010
Sunday, July 18, 2010
Tuesday, July 13, 2010
Tick, Tock...
Woe to you, Washington! For if Pyongyang had been blessed with your freedoms, they would have repented long ago in sackcloth and ashes.
Woe to you, New York! For if Tehran had been blessed with a fraction of your wealth, they would long ago have eradicated hunger in their hemisphere.
Woe to you, Los Angeles! For if Kabul had been blessed with your egalitarian dignity, her women would have long since spent on glorifying God's name what yours spend on boob jobs.
Woe to you, Chicago! For if Mogadishu had been blessed with your security, they would long since have established peace and tranquility on their streets.
But I tell you, it shall be more tolerable on the Day of Judgment for Pyongyang, Tehran, Kabul, and Mogadishu than for you. Will you be exalted to heaven? Lest you repent right now--right now--you shall be brought down to Hades. For if the great blessings of almighty God had been showered on Sodom as they have been on you, it would have remained until this day. But I tell you it will be more tolerable on the Day of Judgment for the land of Sodom than for you.
Woe to you, New York! For if Tehran had been blessed with a fraction of your wealth, they would long ago have eradicated hunger in their hemisphere.
Woe to you, Los Angeles! For if Kabul had been blessed with your egalitarian dignity, her women would have long since spent on glorifying God's name what yours spend on boob jobs.
Woe to you, Chicago! For if Mogadishu had been blessed with your security, they would long since have established peace and tranquility on their streets.
But I tell you, it shall be more tolerable on the Day of Judgment for Pyongyang, Tehran, Kabul, and Mogadishu than for you. Will you be exalted to heaven? Lest you repent right now--right now--you shall be brought down to Hades. For if the great blessings of almighty God had been showered on Sodom as they have been on you, it would have remained until this day. But I tell you it will be more tolerable on the Day of Judgment for the land of Sodom than for you.
Monday, July 12, 2010
As Timely As Today's Headlines...
...I'm recommending this 1989 lecture by N.T. Wright.
This piece warrants close reading, reflection, and frequent revisiting, as it provides what I'm increasingly hopeful is serious, meaningful conceptual framework for a critical yet faithful interpretation of Sacred Scripture that doesn't mutate into either hollow rationalism void of trust in the divine nor its estranged l'il brother, fundamentalism.
This piece warrants close reading, reflection, and frequent revisiting, as it provides what I'm increasingly hopeful is serious, meaningful conceptual framework for a critical yet faithful interpretation of Sacred Scripture that doesn't mutate into either hollow rationalism void of trust in the divine nor its estranged l'il brother, fundamentalism.
Sunday, July 11, 2010
What Abortion Rights Say About the Dignity of Women
In the United States, thanks to a 1973 ruling by the same illustrious body that brought us Dredd Scott and Bush v. Gore, the federal government recognizes the right of women to terminate the life of their pre-birth fetuses at their own discretion. By this recognition, the federal government both denounces any responsibility to protect from violent interference those fetuses and, for the most part, prohibits state and municipal governments, parents of impregnated minors, and the surprisingly still-existent specimens of fathers from protecting them when the expectant mother in question has made the choice to annihilate them.
Notice above that we have said the government "recognizes" this right, not that the government has "granted" or "bestowed" this right. The difference is key. An entitlement--whether or not it is legitimate--which is bestowed by an authority is a privilege, not a right. The government bestows on certain citizens the privilege of driving on public roads; a business bestows on certain clientèle the privilege of using its facilities; parents bestow on children the privilege of enjoying the toys for which the parents have paid; a church bestows on certain parishioners the privilege to serve in various ritual ministries. The meat and potatoes of privileges lie in the granting authority, and should that authority be capricious in the granting or rescinding of privileges, them's, as the bards do sing, the breaks.
Rights are a different matter altogether. A right is something to which a being is necessarily entitled as a result of the simple act of being the type of being it is. The gravitas of rights lies in the nature of the very being in question itself. When speaking of inanimate beings, any talk of "rights" at least borders on absurd unless those inanimate beings are compounded into elaborate cosmic and ecological systems.
The rights of animals make more and more common sense the higher up the food chain one goes. Few would deny, at very least, the right of sentient animals to not be senselessly killed en masse for sport or tortured for thrills. Various theories attribute ever-ascending amounts of debatable rights to animals, up to and including the staunchest moral veganism. What unites all such approaches is the recognition that, whatever rights they believe belong to animals, those rights are not granted by an outside authority, but rather discerned as flowing from the nature of what it is to be an animal.
At the pinnacle of the community of beings within the known material cosmos stands the human person, the rational animal and free moral agent endowed by virtue of his humanity with the utmost dignity and the rights that flow from that dignity, that is, the right to unimpeded access to all that is necessary for his full flourishing as a human person, from the most fundamental--life itself--to material necessities, a nurturing community of equals, cultivation of the life of the mind, ability to discern free moral choices, and so forth.
Anything which is discerned to be a legitimate right says something very powerful about the type of being whose right it is. The right of, say, a puppy dog to not be nailed to a fence for no reason speaks to its great intrinsic value when compared to, say, an inanimate hunk of plastic painted on which are the words "no trespassing." That education, health care, noninterference with sexual and family constitution, and consent to governance are frequently recognized as human rights speaks volumes about the inestimably high dignity of the human person. In the Western world--Christian, Jewish, aboriginal, or secular--our post-Enlightenment society, building on the discoveries of late medieval Scholasticism, and increasingly throughout the globe wherever the imprint of the West is felt, we recognize that the highest dignity belongs to all human persons of both genders and all ethnic backgrounds equally.
Thus we recognize that women, in a way complimentary to and equal with men, are the beings highest in dignity within the known material cosmos.
Or do we?
The right to abortion is often celebrated as one of the major successful steps in the just and necessary liberation of women from ages of Western failure to recognize their dignity. Abortion rights are framed as the right of a woman to control her own body; it is reproductive freedom, forbidding any outsider, whether it be her baby-daddy or the federal government of the United States of America from legislating what she may or may not do with her body.
An impressive argument, no doubt, when one judges the merit of arguments solely by their ability to be typed using letters of the alphabet.
For those who set the bar of logic a tad higher, allow me to eradicate this argument: the fetus is not a body part. The relationship of fetus to woman-making-choice is that of parasite to host, not of part to whole. The argument, therefore lacks only one thing: merit. It is not wrong, per se; it is simply meaningless.
Far from being a great step forward toward achieving full recognition of their dignity, the assertion that a woman has a right to abort her unborn child necessarily makes women subhuman. Recall that rights flow from the very nature of the being who possesses them and, therefore, make qualitative statement about the essence of that being. What statement does the right to abortion make about women? That right leads to the unavoidable conclusion that a woman is the type of being who by her very nature is intrinsically entitled to terminate the life of her own offspring.
Killing one's own offspring is far beneath the dignity of men. Men who do this have acted inhumanely--and inhumanly--and are rightly removed from the general population and segregated in prisons. It is far beneath the dignity of human persons in general--one must take several Darwinian steps backward to find the closest species wherein the mothers kill their young.
To assert, as our Supreme Court has to our undying abject disgrace, that a woman has a right to abortion is to assert that a woman is inferior to a man--indeed that she is inhuman.
I, for one, am not comfortable with this one bit. I contend, rather, that men and women together share in complimentary and equal ways in the highest dignity within the known material cosmos, human personhood, and that this personhood is lived out in its most suitable and dignified fashion when we all give of ourselves for the good of others--when we don't say "this is my body, keep your laws off of it," but, rather, "this is my body, given up for you."
Nowhere in the known universe is the relational, gift-based dignity of humankind lived out more beautifully than in the literal giving of a mother's body to her developing child.
May the day come and come quickly when the lie of abortion rights is exposed for the anti-woman, anti-person crime against humanity that it is.
Notice above that we have said the government "recognizes" this right, not that the government has "granted" or "bestowed" this right. The difference is key. An entitlement--whether or not it is legitimate--which is bestowed by an authority is a privilege, not a right. The government bestows on certain citizens the privilege of driving on public roads; a business bestows on certain clientèle the privilege of using its facilities; parents bestow on children the privilege of enjoying the toys for which the parents have paid; a church bestows on certain parishioners the privilege to serve in various ritual ministries. The meat and potatoes of privileges lie in the granting authority, and should that authority be capricious in the granting or rescinding of privileges, them's, as the bards do sing, the breaks.
Rights are a different matter altogether. A right is something to which a being is necessarily entitled as a result of the simple act of being the type of being it is. The gravitas of rights lies in the nature of the very being in question itself. When speaking of inanimate beings, any talk of "rights" at least borders on absurd unless those inanimate beings are compounded into elaborate cosmic and ecological systems.
The rights of animals make more and more common sense the higher up the food chain one goes. Few would deny, at very least, the right of sentient animals to not be senselessly killed en masse for sport or tortured for thrills. Various theories attribute ever-ascending amounts of debatable rights to animals, up to and including the staunchest moral veganism. What unites all such approaches is the recognition that, whatever rights they believe belong to animals, those rights are not granted by an outside authority, but rather discerned as flowing from the nature of what it is to be an animal.
At the pinnacle of the community of beings within the known material cosmos stands the human person, the rational animal and free moral agent endowed by virtue of his humanity with the utmost dignity and the rights that flow from that dignity, that is, the right to unimpeded access to all that is necessary for his full flourishing as a human person, from the most fundamental--life itself--to material necessities, a nurturing community of equals, cultivation of the life of the mind, ability to discern free moral choices, and so forth.
Anything which is discerned to be a legitimate right says something very powerful about the type of being whose right it is. The right of, say, a puppy dog to not be nailed to a fence for no reason speaks to its great intrinsic value when compared to, say, an inanimate hunk of plastic painted on which are the words "no trespassing." That education, health care, noninterference with sexual and family constitution, and consent to governance are frequently recognized as human rights speaks volumes about the inestimably high dignity of the human person. In the Western world--Christian, Jewish, aboriginal, or secular--our post-Enlightenment society, building on the discoveries of late medieval Scholasticism, and increasingly throughout the globe wherever the imprint of the West is felt, we recognize that the highest dignity belongs to all human persons of both genders and all ethnic backgrounds equally.
Thus we recognize that women, in a way complimentary to and equal with men, are the beings highest in dignity within the known material cosmos.
Or do we?
The right to abortion is often celebrated as one of the major successful steps in the just and necessary liberation of women from ages of Western failure to recognize their dignity. Abortion rights are framed as the right of a woman to control her own body; it is reproductive freedom, forbidding any outsider, whether it be her baby-daddy or the federal government of the United States of America from legislating what she may or may not do with her body.
An impressive argument, no doubt, when one judges the merit of arguments solely by their ability to be typed using letters of the alphabet.
For those who set the bar of logic a tad higher, allow me to eradicate this argument: the fetus is not a body part. The relationship of fetus to woman-making-choice is that of parasite to host, not of part to whole. The argument, therefore lacks only one thing: merit. It is not wrong, per se; it is simply meaningless.
Far from being a great step forward toward achieving full recognition of their dignity, the assertion that a woman has a right to abort her unborn child necessarily makes women subhuman. Recall that rights flow from the very nature of the being who possesses them and, therefore, make qualitative statement about the essence of that being. What statement does the right to abortion make about women? That right leads to the unavoidable conclusion that a woman is the type of being who by her very nature is intrinsically entitled to terminate the life of her own offspring.
Killing one's own offspring is far beneath the dignity of men. Men who do this have acted inhumanely--and inhumanly--and are rightly removed from the general population and segregated in prisons. It is far beneath the dignity of human persons in general--one must take several Darwinian steps backward to find the closest species wherein the mothers kill their young.
To assert, as our Supreme Court has to our undying abject disgrace, that a woman has a right to abortion is to assert that a woman is inferior to a man--indeed that she is inhuman.
I, for one, am not comfortable with this one bit. I contend, rather, that men and women together share in complimentary and equal ways in the highest dignity within the known material cosmos, human personhood, and that this personhood is lived out in its most suitable and dignified fashion when we all give of ourselves for the good of others--when we don't say "this is my body, keep your laws off of it," but, rather, "this is my body, given up for you."
Nowhere in the known universe is the relational, gift-based dignity of humankind lived out more beautifully than in the literal giving of a mother's body to her developing child.
May the day come and come quickly when the lie of abortion rights is exposed for the anti-woman, anti-person crime against humanity that it is.
I Started This Blog Five Minutes Ago...t
I couldn't possibly have any readers.
But this is awesome, nonetheless:
But this is awesome, nonetheless:
Just What the World Needs
If you're anything like me, you've been sitting around saying to yourself, "Self, if I had to guess, I'd say that the one thing this universe needs to pull it back from the brink of that on the brink of which it oughtn't to be is another random USAmerican Catholic guy with a blog."
Ladies and gentlemen, the hour is upon us. Behold: me.
I'm Jeff. I hold a degree in philosophy from Conception Seminary College, am pursuing graduate coursework in social work, ministry, and theology, and work as a freelance writer and as a caregiver within the senior services and hospice care fields.
Pretty much, I'm just some guy. And this is my blog. Which I guarantee will be updated exactly once every so often, or your money back.
Also, I wish I had thought of Mark Shea's blog's tagline: "So that no thought of mine mine, no matter how stupid, should ever go unpublished again."
Alas, I did not, so I'm settling for the runner-up: "Here's some blogs."
That is all.
Oh, and I think Marvel Comics and Buffy the Vampire Slayer are awesome.
Now that is all.
Ladies and gentlemen, the hour is upon us. Behold: me.
I'm Jeff. I hold a degree in philosophy from Conception Seminary College, am pursuing graduate coursework in social work, ministry, and theology, and work as a freelance writer and as a caregiver within the senior services and hospice care fields.
Pretty much, I'm just some guy. And this is my blog. Which I guarantee will be updated exactly once every so often, or your money back.
Also, I wish I had thought of Mark Shea's blog's tagline: "So that no thought of mine mine, no matter how stupid, should ever go unpublished again."
Alas, I did not, so I'm settling for the runner-up: "Here's some blogs."
That is all.
Oh, and I think Marvel Comics and Buffy the Vampire Slayer are awesome.
Now that is all.
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