Now, the Kasper Theory of Democracy?



by George Weigel 6 . 17 . 15

A few weeks ago, after Ireland voted to approve so-called “same-sex marriage,” a correspondent sent me an e-mail quoting Cardinal Walter Kasper’s comment on the result: “A democratic state has the duty to respect the will of the people, and it seems clear that, if the majority of the people wants such homosexual unions, the state has a duty to recognize such rights.” I certainly hope the cardinal was either misquoted or mistranslated. For that comment, taken at face value, would suggest that a distinguished theologian-bishop has seriously misunderstood the nature of democracy and the Church’s teaching about just political communities.

As quoted, that comment would also suggest—to raise a delicate point—a curious myopia on Cardinal Kasper’s part about his own national experience.

For the first word that came to mind on reading Kasper’s remark was “Weimar.” As in the Weimar Republic, which succeeded the Hohenzollern monarchy after World War I and was in turn succeeded by Hitler’s Third Reich—after a democratic election put Hitler and his Nazi Party in power, and after a democratically elected German parliament passed the notorious Ermächtigungsgesetz (“Enabling Act”), which effectively granted Hitler dictatorial powers.

John Paul II, whose teaching about the free and virtuous society in Centesimus Annus remains the pinnacle of Catholic social teaching on the democratic experiment, constructed his social magisterium beneath the shadow that “Weimar” had cast across the history and future of democracy. That is why St. John Paul taught that “democracy” can never be reduced to mere “majority rule.” Majorities can get the technicalities of public policy wrong. More gravely, majorities can also get the fundamentals of justice wrong: as many Germans did in the early 1930s, when the outcome of voting for the Nazi Party was clear to anyone who had read Hitler’s Mein Kampf or listened to his rants; as many French citizens did in the early twentieth century, when the representatives they democratically elected dismantled Catholic schools, exiled members of religious orders, and expropriated their property; and as too many Americans did during our long national struggle over racial segregation, legally imposed by democratically-elected legislatures.

That is why John Paul also insisted that, of the three interlocking parts of the free and virtuous society—a democratic polity, a free economy, and a vibrant public moral culture—the cultural sector is the key to the rest. For it takes a certain kind of people, formed in the arts of self-governance by a robust moral culture and living certain virtues, to operate the machinery of democracy and the free economy in ways that promote decency, justice, and solidarity, not degradation, injustice, or new forms of authoritarian bullying.

Cardinal Kasper’s comments, as reported and translated, also imply a rather strange understanding of what “rights” are. As Catholic social doctrine understands them, “rights” are not bequests of the state—even when the state is implementing in law what it believes to be the will of the majority of citizens. Rather, the Church teaches that basic civil and political “rights” are hard-wired into us as the means to fulfill our duties to God and to our neighbors. A morally well-formed civil society recognizes and cherishes those rights (such as religious freedom, free speech, and freedom of assembly) and a just state, acting as the servant of civil society, affords those rights the legal protection they are due.

None of this suggests that the just state has a “duty,” under any circumstances, to afford legal recognition to “homosexual unions” as if they were true marriages to which people have a “right”—which reason and revelation tell us they are not. A just state may well create legal arrangements in which citizens in a variety of relationships are legally and financially enabled to care for those for whom they believe themselves responsible. But that’s not what happened in Ireland, and it’s not what’s afoot elsewhere.

Democracy depends on a broad public consensus that there are Things As They Are, including moral Things As They Are. Absent that consensus, the shadow of Weimar lengthens, and threatens, yet again.

George Weigel is Distinguished Senior Fellow of the Ethics and Public Policy Center in Washington, D.C.

 

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Taken from: http://www.firstthings.com/web-exclusives/2015/06/now-the-kasper-theory-of-democracy

Euthanasia Debate With Archbishop Anthony Fisher OP and Prof Peter Singer Exposes Major Rifts in Culture

 



Catholic Communications, Sydney Archdiocese,
14 Aug 2015

Archbishop Anthony Fisher OP - what kind of community will we be in the future?

Archbishop of Sydney Anthony Fisher OP said he was very pleased to debate Prof Peter Singer on the subject of euthanasia to a packed Sydney Town Hall.

"The debate was civil and probing and before a large audience, mostly of very thoughtful young people who were engaged with all the issues. It exposed some major rifts in our culture with respect to the vulnerable and those who are suffering, to healthcare and the law, and to the responsibilities of freedom," the Archbishop said following the Thursday evening debate.
The audience of around 1200 saw two well-prepared presenters. Archbishop Fisher is a prominent bioethicist, a leader in moral theology and philosophy and a formal lawyer.
Prof Peter Singer is a moral philosopher at Princeton University specialising in applied ethics and former chair of the philosophy department at Monash University.
Their topic was "Should Voluntary Euthanasia be legalised?"

Around 1200 attended the debate at the Sydney Townhall

Archbishop Anthony has argued against euthanasia many times in articles and publications, interviews, addresses, homilies and debates.

Professor Singer has also written and lectured extensively on euthanasia as well as selective infanticide, abortion and animal rights.

The two men put their  case and rebuttal and took around forty minutes of questions from the audience, guided by the moderator Scott Stephens, he ABC's online editor of Religion and Ethics. Both had a strong support base in the audience.
Professor Singer wanted to stick strictly to the topic of voluntary euthanasia only for competent adults with a terminal illness -  no deviation, no broadening the discussion.

Prof Peter Singer is moral philosopher at
Princeton University

Archbishop Fisher argued the subject could not be kept within such narrow confines and was happy to take questions from a broader scope.
Reflecting on the debate, Archbishop Anthony said;" My big question was: who dies in a euthanasia regime? It is, of course, the frail, elderly, sick, lonely, disabled, babies.

'So what seems to me to be ultimately at issue is what kind of community we will be in the future: will it be one in which the young and frail, the sick and sorry, the depressed and disabled are devalued, and more and more at risk? Or one where they will be protected and nurtured?"

At the conclusion of the debate which was hosted by the Catholic Society of St Peter student association at Sydney University, Archbishop Fisher and Prof Singer exchanged copies of their latest books - although there is little doubt they are very familiar with each other's work.

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Taken from: http://www.sydneycatholic.org/news/latest_news/2015/2015814_1904.shtml

Jacob's Ladder: Ten Steps To Truth. Peter Kreeft.



There are ten important questions everyone should ask; and the answers to these questions, which lead to ultimate truth, are a matter of reason, not of faith.
Well-known Catholic philosopher and writer Peter Kreeft tackles each of these questions in a logical step-by-step way, like climbing the rungs of a ladder. Because questions are best answered by dialogue, Kreeft answers these fundamental questions in an imaginary conversation between two very different people who meet at the beach. Kreeft's characters begin at the beginning, at the bottom of the ladder, which is the passion for truth. When it comes to the most important questions a person can ask, no mere interest in philosophical dabbling will do. The passion for truth does not stop there, however, but carries the reader from one page to the next in this thought-provoking adventure of the mind.
Among the topics, or "steps", that Kreeft's characters delve into include:

• Do you have the passion to know?
• Does truth exist?
• What is the meaning of life?
• What is love, and why is it so important for our lives?
• If there is a God, what proof is there for his existence?
• Has God revealed himself to us in a personal way?

Peter Kreeft, Ph.D., a Professor of Philosophy at Boston College, is one of the most widely read Christian authors of our time. His many bestselling books include Back to Virtue, Because God is Real, You Can Understand the Bible, Angels and Demons, Heaven: The Heart's Deepest Longing, Fundamentals of the Faith, and A Summa of the Summa."Peter Kreeft is our generation's C.S. Lewis, as this brilliant new book of his further demonstrates. The genius of Jacob's Ladder lies in Kreeft's canny ability to capture the imagination with vivid and arresting prose while simultaneously leading the reader, step by step, above and beyond the cramped limitations of the imagination into the spacious and lofty heights of reason, reality, and truth."


- Patrick Madrid, author, Where is That in the Bible?"In this delightful and ingenious guidebook for living Catholic faith, Peter Kreeft removes most contemporary popular objections to embracing God, Jesus, and the Catholic Church. Using two characters, Mother, an imposing beach-going philosopher of life, and Libby, a 23-year old former journalist who has naively adopted the culture's critique of religion, Kreeft exposes the many fallacies in contemporary moral and philosophical relativism. By imparting a deeper insight into the ideal of passion, truth, meaning and love, Mother creates a light to shine upon the true, good, and beautiful character of principles, God, Jesus, and Catholicism. This is a "must read" for those seeking a way out of our cultural malaise."


- Fr. Robert J. Spitzer, S.J., Author, Five Pillars of the Spiritual Life
 "In Jacob's Ladder, Peter Kreeft offers a wonderful book for someone genuinely interested in asking profound questions and seeking profound answers. With clarity, wit, and insight, the characters of his dialogue consider some the most central questions in human life-including truth, meaning, love, God and Jesus-in a way both entertaining and accessible. The first chapter especially, considering and refuting various forms of relativism and subjectivism, is a necessary preamble to any serious discussion of anything."


- Christopher Kaczor, Author, The Seven Big Myths about the Catholic Church
"When I was coming into the Catholic Church 25 years ago, the voice that stood out for me more than any other on the contemporary scene as an oasis of clear and accessible sanity was Peter Kreeft's. Jacob's Ladder shows that a mind, heart and soul filled with Catholic teaching only becomes richer, deeper and more beautiful with time. Lift this joyous chalice to the lips of your soul and drink deeply. It is satisfying indeed!" - Mark Shea, author, By What Authority?


And many other important questions and topics to help climb the ladder to the truth about life.


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Taken from: http://www.ignatius.com/Products/JACL-P/jacobs-ladder.aspx

Chesterton (1874-1936)

 

G. K. Chesterton (1874-1936) Author Page | Ignatius Insight


• Articles By and About G. K. Chesterton
• Ignatius Press Books about G. K. Chesterton
• Books by G. K. Chesterton

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G. K. Chesterton: “Who is this guy and why haven’t I heard of him?”


A pithy bio of G.K. Chesterton by Dale Ahlquist, President, American Chesterton Society
I’ve heard the question more than once. It is asked by people who have just started to discover G.K. Chesterton. They have begun reading a Chesterton book, or perhaps have seen an issue of Gilbert! Magazine, or maybe they’ve only encountered a series of pithy quotations that marvelously articulate some forgotten bit of common sense. They ask the question with a mixture of wonder, gratitude and . . . resentment. They are amazed by what they have discovered. They are thankful to have discovered it. And they are almost angry that it has taken so long for them to make the discovery.
“Who is this guy. . .?”


Gilbert Keith Chesterton (1874-1936) cannot be summed up in one sentence. Nor in one paragraph. In fact, in spite of the fine biographies that have been written of him, (and his Autobiography) he has never been captured between the covers of one book. But rather than waiting to separate the goats from the sheep, let’s just come right out and say it: G.K. Chesterton was the best writer of the twentieth century. He said something about everything and he said it better than anybody else. But he was no mere wordsmith. He was very good at expressing himself, but more importantly, he had something very good to express. The reason he was the greatest writer of the twentieth century was because he was also the greatest thinker of the twentieth century.
Born in London, Chesterton was educated at St. Paul’s, but never went to college. He went to art school. In 1900, he was asked to contribute a few magazine articles on art criticism, and went on to become one of the most prolific writers of all time. He wrote a hundred books, contributions to 200 more, hundreds of poems, including the epic Ballad of the White Horse, five plays, five novels, and some two hundred short stories, including a popular series featuring the priest-detective, Father Brown. In spite of his literary accomplishments, he considered himself primarily a journalist. He wrote over 4000 newspaper essays, including 30 years worth of weekly columns for the Illustrated London News, and 13 years of weekly columns for the Daily News. He also edited his own newspaper, G.K.’s Weekly. (To put it into perspective, four thousand essays is the equivalent of writing an essay a day, every day, for 11 years. If you’re not impressed, try it some time. But they have to be good essays, all of them, as funny as they are serious, and as readable and rewarding a century after you’ve written them.)
Chesterton was equally at ease with literary and social criticism, history, politics, economics, philosophy, and theology. His style is unmistakable, always marked by humility, consistency, paradox, wit, and wonder. His writing remains as timely and as timeless today as when it first appeared, even though much of it was published in throw away paper.
This man who composed such profound and perfect lines as “The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting; it has been found difficult and left untried,” stood 6’4″ and weighed about 300 pounds, usually had a cigar in his mouth, and walked around wearing a cape and a crumpled hat, tiny glasses pinched to the end of his nose, swordstick in hand, laughter blowing through his moustache. And usually had no idea where or when his next appointment was. He did much of his writing in train stations, since he usually missed the train he was supposed to catch. In one famous anecdote, he wired his wife, saying, “Am at Market Harborough. Where ought I to be?” His faithful wife, Frances, attended to all the details of his life, since he continually proved he had no way of doing it himself. She was later assisted by a secretary, Dorothy Collins, who became the couple’s surrogate daughter, and went on to become the writer’s literary executrix, continuing to make his work available after his death.
This absent-minded, overgrown elf of a man, who laughed at his own jokes and amused children at birthday parties by catching buns in his mouth, this was the man who wrote a book called The Everlasting Man, which led a young atheist named C.S. Lewis to become a Christian. This was the man who wrote a novel called The Napoleon of Notting Hill, which inspired Michael Collins to lead a movement for Irish Independence. This was the man who wrote an essay in the Illustrated London News that inspired Mohandas Gandhi to lead a movement to end British colonial rule in India. This was a man who, when commissioned to write a book on St. Thomas Aquinas (aptly titled Saint Thomas Aquinas), had his secretary check out a stack of books on St. Thomas from the library, opened the top book on the stack, thumbed through it, closed it, and proceeded to dictate a book on St. Thomas. Not just any book. The renowned Thomistic scholar, Etienne Gilson, had this to say about it:

“I consider it as being without possible comparison the best book ever written on St. Thomas. Nothing short of genius can account for such an achievement. Everybody will no doubt admit that it is a ‘clever’ book, but the few readers who have spent twenty or thirty years in studying St. Thomas. . . cannot fail to perceive that the so-called ‘wit’ of Chesterton has put their scholarship to shame. He has guessed all that which we had tried to demonstrate, and he has said all that which they were more or less clumsily attempting to express in academic formulas. Chesterton was one of the deepest thinkers who ever existed; he was deep because he was right; and he could not help being right; but he could not either help being modest and charitable, so he left it to those who could understand him to know that he was right, and deep; to the others, he apologized for being right, and he made up for being deep by being witty. That is all they can see of him.”Chesterton debated many of the celebrated intellectuals of his time: George Bernard Shaw, H.G. Wells, Bertrand Russell, Clarence Darrow. According to contemporary accounts, Chesterton usually emerged as the winner of these contests, however, the world has immortalized his opponents and forgotten Chesterton, and now we hear only one side of the argument, and we are enduring the legacies of socialism, relativism, materialism, and skepticism. Ironically, all of his opponents regarded Chesterton with the greatest affection. And George Bernard Shaw said: “The world is not thankful enough for Chesterton.His writing has been praised by Ernest Hemingway, Graham Greene, Evelyn Waugh, Jorge Luis Borges, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Karel Capek, Marshall McLuhan, Paul Claudel, Dorothy L. Sayers, Agatha Christie, Sigrid Undset, Ronald Knox, Kingsley Amis, W.H. Auden, Anthony Burgess, E.F. Schumacher, Neil Gaiman, and Orson Welles. To name a few.

T.S. Eliot said that Chesterton “deserves a permanent claim on our loyalty.”

“. . . and why haven’t I heard of him?

There are three answers to this question:

1. I don’t know.
2. You’ve been cheated.

Chesterton is the most unjustly neglected writer of our time. Perhaps it is proof that education is too important to be left to educators and that publishing is too important to be left to publishers, but there is no excuse why Chesterton is no longer taught in our schools and why his writing is not more widely reprinted and especially included in college anthologies. Well, there is an excuse. It seems that Chesterton is tough to pigeonhole, and if a writer cannot be quickly consigned to a category, or to one-word description, he risks falling through the cracks. Even if he weighs three hundred pounds.
But there is another problem. Modern thinkers and commentators and critics have found it much more convenient to ignore Chesterton rather than to engage him in an argument, because to argue with Chesterton is to lose.
Chesterton argued eloquently against all the trends that eventually took over the twentieth century: materialism, scientific determinism, moral relativism, and spineless agnosticism. He also argued against both socialism and capitalism and showed why they have both been the enemies of freedom and justice in modern society.
And what did he argue for? What was it he defended? He defended “the common man” and common sense. He defended the poor. He defended the family. He defended beauty. And he defended Christianity and the Catholic Faith. These don’t play well in the classroom, in the media, or in the public arena. And that is probably why he is neglected. The modern world prefers writers who are snobs, who have exotic and bizarre ideas, who glorify decadence, who scoff at Christianity, who deny the dignity of the poor, and who think freedom means no responsibility.

But even though Chesterton is no longer taught in schools, you cannot consider yourself educated until you have thoroughly read Chesterton. And furthermore, thoroughly reading Chesterton is almost a complete education in itself. Chesterton is indeed a teacher, and the best kind. He doesn’t merely astonish you. He doesn’t just perform the wonder of making you think. He goes beyond that. He makes you laugh.

(Reprinted by kind permission of Dale Ahlquist and the American Chesterton Society.)

Dale Ahlquist is the president and co-founder of the American Chesterton Society.
He is the creator and host of the television series, “G.K. Chesterton: The Apostle of Common Sense,” on EWTN. Dale is the publisher of Gilbert Magazine, author of The Chesterton University Student Handbook, editor of The Gift of Wonder: The Many Sides of G.K. Chesterton, associate editor of the Collected Works of G.K. Chesterton (Ignatius). He has been called “one of the most respected Chesterton scholars in the world” and has delighted audiences around the country with his variety of talks on the great English writer. He is a graduate of Carleton College (B.A.) in Northfield, Minnesota, and Hamline University (M.A.) in St. Paul, Minnesota. He lives near Minneapolis with his wife and five children. Like Chesterton, Dale is a Catholic convert and a joyful defender of the Catholic Faith. He can be contacted at info@chesterton.org.

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Related IgnatiusInsight.com Excerpts and Articles
• How the Great Wind Came to Beacon House | G. K. Chesterton | Chapter One of Manalive
• G.K. Chesterton, the Poet | Denis J. Conlon
• St. Thomas More | G. K. Chesterton
• A Simple Thought | G. K. Chesterton
• The Problem of the Plantagenets | G. K. Chesterton
• Chesterton and Orthodoxy | Carl E. Olson and Dale Ahlquist
• Seeing With the Eyes of G.K. Chesterton | Dale Ahlquist
• Recovering The Lost Art of Common Sense | Dale Ahlquist
• Common Sense Apostle & Cigar Smoking Mystic | Dale Ahlquist
• Chesterton and the “Paradoxy” of Orthodoxy | Carl E. Olson
• The Attraction of Orthodoxy | Joseph Pearce
• The Emancipation of Domesticity | G.K. Chesterton
• The God in the Cave | G.K. Chesterton
• What Is America? | G.K. Chesterton
• Mary and the Convert | G.K. Chesterton
• Chesterton and Saint Francis | Joseph Pearce
• Chesterton and the Delight of Truth | James V. Schall, S.J.
• The Life and Theme of G.K. Chesterton | Randall Paine | An Introduction to The Autobiography of G.K. Chesterton
• Hot Water and Fresh Air: On Chesterton and His Foes | Janet E. Smith
• ChesterBelloc | Ralph McInerny

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Ignatius Press Books About Chesterton’s Life and Work


Classic Works by G.K. Chesterton




The Collected Works of G.K. Chesterton
• Volume 1: Heretics, Orthodoxy, Blatchford Controversies (Softcover | Hardcover)
• Volume 2: St. Francis, Everlasting Man, St. Thomas (Softcover | Hardcover)
• Volume 3: The Catholic Church and Conversion; Where All Roads Lead; The Well and the Shallows; and others. (Softcover)
• Volume 4: What’s Wrong with the World, Superstition of Divorce, Eugenics and Other Evils (Softcover)
• Volume 5: The Outline of Sanity, The End of The Armistice, The Appetite of Tyranny, Utopia of Usurers, and more (Softcover)
• Volume 6: To be published
• Volume 7: The Ball and the Cross, Manalive, The Flying Inn (Softcover | Hardcover)
• Volume 8: The Man Who Knew Too Much, Tales of the Long Bow, The Return of Don Quixote (Softcover | Hardcover)
• Volume 9: To be published
• Volume 10: Collected Poetry, Part 1 (Softcover)
• Volume 10: Collected Poetry, Part 2 (Softcover | Hardcover)
• Volume 10: Collected Poetry, Part 3 (Softcover | Hardcover)
• Volume 11: Collected Plays and Chesterton on Shaw (Softcover)
• Volume 12: Father Brown Stories, Part 1 (Softcover | Hardcover)
• Volume 13: Father Brown Stories, Part 2 (Softcover | Hardcover)
• Volume 14: Short Stories, Fairy Tales, Mystery Stories (Softcover)
• Volume 15: Chesterton on Dickens (Softcover)
• Volume 16: The Autobiography (Softcover | Hardcover)
• Volume 17: To be published
• Volume 18: Robert Louis Stevenson, Chaucer, Leo Tolstoy, Thomas Carlyle (Softcover | Hardcover)
• Volume 19: To be published
• Volume 20: Christendom in Dublin, Irish Impressions, The New Jerusalem, A Short History of England (Softcover | Hardcover)
• Volume 21: What I Saw in America, The Resurrection of Rome, Sidelights (Softcover)
• Volume 22: To be published
• Volume 23: To be published
• Volume 24: To be published
• Volume 25: To be published
• Volume 26: To be published
• Volume 27: Illustrated London News, 1905-1907 (Softcover | Hardcover)
• Volume 28: Illustrated London News, 1908-1910 (Softcover | Hardcover)
• Volume 29: Illustrated London News, 1911-1913 (Softcover | Hardcover)
• Volume 30: Illustrated London News, 1914-1916 (Softcover | Hardcover)
• Volume 31: Illustrated London News, 1917-1919 (Softcover | Hardcover)
• Volume 32: Illustrated London News, 1920-1922 (Softcover | Hardcover)
• Volume 33: Illustrated London News, 1923-1925 (Softcover | Hardcover)
• Volume 34: Illustrated London News, 1926-1928 (Softcover | Hardcover)
• Volume 35: Illustrated London News, 1929-1931
• Volume 36: Illustrated London News, 1932-1934 (Softcover | Hardcover)


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Taken from: http://www.ignatiusinsight.com/authors/gkchesterton.asp