Next Thursday Pope Benedict XVI arrives in the United Kingdom for a three day visit that will culminate, on the 19th September, in the beatification of Cardinal John Henry Newman. In this and two companion articles MercatorNet surveys the controversies surrounding these events and pays its own tribute to the great Englishman.

John Henry Newman will soon be officially recognised by the Catholic Church as a blessed in heaven. One of his many outstanding qualities was his capacity for friendship. Our society needs to evoke once more the worth and beauty of this type of friendship. Cicero wrote, “a friend is, as it were, a second self.” This is possible when a person gives himself to another, first out of common mutual interests, but eventually in a selfless manner, for the good of the other. Jesus Christ radicalized that idea by teaching that a friend is one who would lay down his life for another.

Newman had numerous male and female friends whom we know from his copious correspondence. He visited them when they were ill, encouraged them in difficulties and advised them on all types of matters.… click here to read whole article and make comments

Let’s start with a little warm-up exercise. Here are three people who have made pronouncements on the family: a government advisor on families and parenting; a filmstar; an academic. See if you can correctly match them with the following quotations:

“Twenty-first century American families come in a dazzling array of sizes, shapes, colours, and gender-slash-generational patterns. This reality deserves to be reflected in the literature that children read. Until recently, however, children’s books have privileged a paradigm of homogeneity and heterosexuality.”

“…what is it that defines family? It isn’t necessarily the traditional mother, father, two children and a dog named Spot. Love is love and family is what is around you and who is in your immediate sphere.”

“People are constantly redefining what it means to be a family. What we are seeing is that family shape is changing all the time, the notion of a traditional nuclear family … certainly isn’t the norm now. … What policy-makers must not do is … [try] to reverse the tide of trends by trying to encourage more ‘traditional families’.”

Not very… click here to read whole article and make comments

If taking your dog for a walk is your idea of Sunday worship then Vermont’s Dog Chapel is for you. It has stained glass windows dedicated to various dogs as saints. Pilgrims can attach a photo to the walls of their deceased canine as a memorial of happier times. Here is a place where anyone can wear a collar and believe whatever they want just so long as they don’t believe it too strongly. The vibe of the Chapel is captured on the sign outside: “Welcome all creeds, all breeds, no dogmas allowed.”

Dog Chapel resonates with the warp and woof of our times, even though scepticism greets the truth claims by any church, whether it be Catholic, Protestant or Scientologist. Indeed, the mere attempt to present objective values about life or death, rather than just stating mere facts, is seen as religious fanaticism. It could be an attempt to take control of my thoughts, freedom and wallet, people fear.

Rather than roll over and play dead before authority our society prefers the relativist claim that “you have your truth and I have mine”. Confrontation is avoided by watering down… click here to read whole article and make comments

Sometimes the danger of an idea becomes evident only in retrospect. This is the case with President Harry S Truman’s decision to drop atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki 65 years ago. He still has many defenders. But I would argue that by endorsing the deliberate killing of innocent civilians, he helped our society to break with centuries-old traditions of morality. In a very real way Little Boy and Fat Man are responsible for the moral chaos of the cultural revolution which erupted in the 1960s.

Of all that has been written about this decision, the most pointed remarks come from the Cambridge philosopher Elizabeth Anscombe (1919-2001). A world expert on Wittgenstein, she was also a mother of seven and committed pro-lifer. She was once arrested for protesting outside of an abortion clinic. In 1956 she issued a pamphlet opposing Oxford University’s decision to award President Truman an honorary degree:

“For men to choose to kill the innocent as a means to their ends is always murder, and murder is one of the worst of human actions. […] But I shall be asked… click here to read whole article and make comments

Wrestling with difficult questions is routine work for ethicists. But some are much more difficult than others. MercatorNet’s question, “What did I believe was presently the world’s most dangerous idea?”, falls in the former category. My response, “The idea that there is nothing special about being human and, therefore, humans do not deserve “special respect”, as compared with other animals or even robots”, might seem anodyne and a “cop out”, but I’d like to try to convince you otherwise.

Whether humans are "special" -- sometimes referred to as human exceptionalism or uniqueness – and, therefore, deserve “special respect” is a controversial and central question in bioethics, and how we answer it will have a major impact on many important ethical issues.

Although I will frame this discussion in a very limited context of whether humans merit greater respect than animals and robots, it should be kept in mind that not seeing human beings and human life as deserving “special respect” would have very broad and serious impact far outside this context. It could affect matters that range from respect for human rights, to justifications for armed conflict,… click here to read whole article and make comments

Have you ever heard of the famous wager of the 17th century mathematician and philosopher Blaise Pascal? "Either God is, or he is not. But to which view shall we be inclined? Reason cannot decide this question. Infinite chaos separates us. At the far end of this infinite distance [death] a coin is being spun that will come down heads [God] or tails [no God]. How will you wager?" The agnostic says, "The right thing is not to wager at all." Pascal replies, "But you must wager. There is no choice. You are already committed."

As Pascal points out, we can't not choose. Agnosticism is not really an option, for we must act, not just think, in this life, and all action is either for or against God. All actions either are oriented to and motivated by love, or they are not. (I mean voluntary, deliberate, and significant actions here—sneezing or putting on one's socks in the morning might be safely considered neutral!) If God is love, then there can be no real neutrality. Of course, Pascal's wager is only a rough start for those who have little else than their self-interest to motivate themselves.… click here to read whole article and make comments

We have asked several of our contributors to respond to a question in our occasional series of forums. This time the question is: What is the world's most dangerous idea? We expect that the answers will be quite controversial. Please add your comments. 

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Whereas recognition of the inherent dignity and of the equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family is the foundation of freedom, justice and peace in the world. ~ Preamble to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR)

One day, we may remember 1948 as the peak of mankind’s respect for one another. Sixty years later, ivory tower snobs, animal rights activists, abortion and euthanasia proponents are increasingly attacking the foundation for freedom and justice declared in the UDHR, the special value of each and every human being, also known as human dignity.

A few years ago, a New York Times reporter celebrated the extension of human rights to nonhuman animals, after the environmental committee of the Spanish Parliament voted to grant great apes the right to life and freedom.… click here to read whole article and make comments

We have asked several of our contributors to respond to a question in our occasional series of forums. This time the question is: What is the world's most dangerous idea? We expect that the answers will be quite controversial. Please add your comments. 

In case you missed it, US President Barack Obama declared October 2009 to be “National Information Literacy Awareness Month.” The cynical may see this action as a sign that our leaders fear we are losing the battle against cheap information, and I agree. By cheap I mean that the internet has made huge amounts of information easily available: for example the free, collaboratively written Wikipedia measures up quite well against traditional expensive print encyclopedias. But much of the information that is available is cheap in terms of quality as well. The very abundance and ready availability of information undermine efforts by educators, librarians and others to develop good information literacy skills and habits.

The concept of information literacy is itself only a generation old, a child of the Information Age. The need to be able to find information and evaluate it is not… click here to read whole article and make comments

We have asked several of our contributors to respond to a question in our occasional series of forums. This time the question is: What is the world's most dangerous idea? We expect that the answers will be quite controversial. Please add your comments. 

When faced with the even worse options of the 20th century, totalitarian communism and fascism, there is a danger that well-intentioned people defend capitalism without being aware of the real injustices that are part of its foundation, history, principles, and ethos.

Bad ideas usually come in pairs, one being subtly evil, the other being grotesquely and openly evil. Ironically, the grotesquely evil idea is usually the result of a backlash against the real injustices caused by the subtly dangerous idea. We can see this reality in the relationship between capitalism (subtly dangerous materialism) and communism (openly evil materialism). Both systems are materialistic at heart, feed off of vice, and deflate the human spirit. Of the two, capitalism does this in a subtle way.

In the story of Faust, Faustus makes a pact with the Devil. At first, Faust gets to enjoy all… click here to read whole article and make comments

We have asked several of our contributors to respond to a question in our occasional series of forums. This time the question is: What is the world's most dangerous idea? We expect that the answers will be quite controversial. Please add your comments. 

The world’s most dangerous idea would have to bear upon its biggest problems; these are not political or economic in nature, but ultimately cultural in origin – which is to say that they are in some way related to religion.  It would be difficult not to include among them the breakdown of the family – the scale and speed of which is hard to imagine without the birth control pill.  Though it promises “control” – an illusion – it has instead delivered discord, demographic disaster, and ultimately deflationary pressures in the economy. A similar frame of mind – “if it works, it is ok” – also justified the unscrupulous financial practices which contributed mightily to our present economic woes.

More precisely, then, our biggest problems can be traced back to moral and intellectual shortcomings which, in our present cultural climate, are no longer… click here to read whole article and make comments