Ămǝ-tŭr' Kăth'ǝ-lǐk

While doing some  background reading for a course on Bioethics, I ran across a compelling argument from Nicanor Pier Giorgio Austriaco, O.P. in his book Biomedicine & Beatitude: An Introduction to Catholic Bioethics  in which he uses the idea of human dignity and the ideals as held by liberals to show that liberalism is at its core a contradiction when it comes to the selective or extrinsic application of who has human dignity and how much d ignity they are allotted. The argument goes like this. Liberalism prizes personal autonomy above all else. Anything that seeks to limit personal autonomy or at least their perception of personal autonomy (pro-life movements, legislation for traditional marriage, the expectation of never having one’s feelings hurt are just a few examples) is seen as an evil and should be decried. Therefore the liberal calls slavery, the holocaust, and genocide evil not because they are intrinsically but because they limit the autonomy in these groups ...

There is only one thing I want from coffee – to enjoy it; this desire led me to amass no fewer than ten different gadgets and devices to help extract the flavor from the coffee bean – of which only three devices remain.   Like some kind of medieval torturer, I’ve grounded, pounded, soaked, cut, chopped, crunched, roasted, drowned, boiled, and steamed, short of putting it on the rack, which believe me I thought about, I have done everything possible to find a way to extract the most amount of enjoyment from the coffee bean.   In many cases the yield did not equate to the work poured into preparing a good cup of coffee, far from it.   With each step I put between myself and a good cup of coffee my enjoyment of the drink seemed to decrease; the work-cost-enjoyment ratio just did not add up.   As the ratio increased in terms of work and cost, the enjoyment I received remained about the same, or it increased but eventually plateaued. In economic terms, ...

As someone who has in the past unhealthy compulsive behavior (can be read as “addiction” if that is easier) this is what I wish a priest had said to me decades ago: "I'm sorry.  It wasn't supposed to be this way. This evil has entered into your life and you did not seek it out, but it found you, and you had no idea of how to protect yourself from it, and the people who were supposed to protect you didn't.  They might not have even known, and if they did they failed to see the seriousness of it.  I am sorry.  But, you don't have to continue in this. I will forgive you every time you come into the confessional. But with Christ's love, spiritual direction with me, and the help of a counselor we can get you back to where you need to be.  It will take a long time, and it isn't going to be easy, but it will be worth it. And I love you." Instead what I received from priests in the confessional went something more like this: "Try doing something e...

  Used according to Creative Commons image by alabos life No alterations made to this image other than resizing. "We're just two straight dudes having dinner together" my friend sheepishly said as the waitress sat us down at our table. It was an innocent and joking comment from my friend that in some sense was meant to be taken lightly, but at the same time meant to express to those around us that we were indeed not homosexuals on a date.  However, my friend felt the need to make this comment on more than one occasion when I have met up with him for a quick bite when I was in his area of town. Even more recently, I grabbed a burger with a different friend who managed to convince the waitress to give him a free milkshake, and my friend jokingly asked for two straws for the free milkshake: one for him and one for her.  It took a moment for her to realize what was said because she was at first excited, then immediately disappointed: excited because she thought we wer...

There is a current trend in young adult literature in the mass production of what is styled as “dystopian literature.” One must wonder as to the popularity of these novels especially amongst political seasons, that whether or not it is an admission or at least an acknowledgment that Oceania is no more dystopian than the United States of America. In reality, the great crisis of nations and governments is that they have always been in crisis and are all a little dystopian.  Though there is no real proposed cure other than a violent regime change, I'd like to propose a fleeting thought of mine that Shakespeare might might serve as a kind of remedy or at least a catalyst of change for dystopia. When St. Thomas More wrote Utopia, the name for the literary genre from which we owe the negation of More’s famous work, he was writing about a no place, a nowhere, in space and time that was far from an idealistic society free of injustices. This point is missed by many high school teacher...