Br. Steve | May 31, 2010
Video from Al-Jazeera: Video From the AP: Al-Jazeera Live Blog Coverage of Raid Gaza Flotilla Attacked: Israel Storms Aid Ship, At Least 10 Dead – The Huffington Post Why the Gaza Boat Deaths are a Huge Deal – Blake Hounshell, Foreign Policy Turkey Recalls Envoy to Israel in Response to Gaza Flotilla Deaths – Haaretz [...]
Br. Steve | May 31, 2010
Multiple sources are reporting that Israeli commandos have attacked and killed several members of The Free Gaza Movement on board a ship in international waters. This ship was part of a “Freedom Flotilla” bringing aid and reconstruction supplies to Gaza. This was the 9th such mission by FGM, five of the previous missions were successful, but [...]
Br. Steve | May 29, 2010
BP reported today that the so-called “top kill” procedure has failed to staunch the massive flow of oil into the Gulf and will move on to their next option The next option, if successful, is not expected to capture all of the oil gushing from the pipe, only most of it. This latest failure follows [...]
Br. Steve | May 29, 2010
The USCCB just published a short summary on the relationship between charity and justice in Catholic Social Teaching (CST). Simply put, charity is about meeting people’s immediate needs, while justice asks why those needs exist in the first place and how does society need to change to eliminate them. These two concepts are the two [...]
Br. Steve | May 29, 2010
Law professors June Carbone and Naomi Cahn suggest that more and more people, both Catholic and Protestant, are choosing which Church they attend based on political and theological considerations and not geographical ones. I can’t speak for the Protestants, but this does fit my experience of Catholics. The danger here, according to Carbone and Cahn, [...]
Br. Steve | May 29, 2010
The American Academy of Pediatricians has reversed an earlier policy statement that suggested allowing doctors to perform a ritual nick of the clitoris as a way of satisfying cultural requirements without resorting to more traditional female circumcisions. The policy was widely condemned by advocacy groups and survivors of female genital mutilation. I wrote about this [...]
Br. Steve | May 27, 2010
Republican Senators Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and James Inhofe of Oklahoma continue their efforts to block raising the liability cap on oil spills. This is a necessary measure to ensure that BP can be held legally accountable for the entire cost of the Gulf catastrophe, not just the first $75 million as under current federal [...]
Br. Steve | May 27, 2010
I think that this is cultural relativism run amok. There is a difference between legitimate toleration of other customs and viewpoints, even those we disagree with, and allowing real harm to be done to children in the name of tolerance. If we were talking about child marriage (or rape) we wouldn’t even be having this [...]
Br. Steve | May 25, 2010
Mac McClelland has a great article at Mother Jones describing her visit to the Elmer’s Island Wildlife Refuge near the town of Grand Isle, Louisiana. One of her more interesting revelations is how the local sheriff’s department seems to be taking BP’s orders in how to deal with the spill and handle the media. This level of [...]
Br. Steve | May 25, 2010
A recent Gallup poll indicates that many Americans identify themselves as pro-life and still support some form of legalized abortion, putting to lie the claims of some anti-abortion activists that the numbers indicate increasing support of their position. The number of people who believed that abortion is morally wrong actually went down slightly to %50. [...]
