Summum Bonum

A colleague of mine asked me several months ago to teach a course on Dystopian novels. My thought at the time was what a downer. However, as I read the what purport to be “bioethics” blogs (which bear little resemblance to any serious ethical thought) I trembled and I saw the value in that suggestion. I am planning such a course and will deliver it next spring 2010. Eugenics is clearly back and it is a part of the western cultural landscape; in fact, it will probably be chic amongst fanatical greenies who are pro-abortion, pro birth control pill, but won’t eat an apple that isn’t organic. Of course no one talks about eugenics but the  the Church, the Pope and a few odd bishops. During a Vatican conference a couple of weeks ago called “New Frontiers of Genetics and the Risk of Eugenics,” Benedict XVI warned of the ever growing “normalcy” of eugenic thinking. We’ve seen this thinking for a long time in various renditions; it became obvious in the embryonic stem cell debate when John Danforth to Sheryl Crow clamored that cloned embryos really weren’t human beings. Eugenics is entirely possible in a culture which commodifies absolutely everything including human beings and their DNA. Legalized abortion is already a basic argument of the strong against the weak and when a society accepts that, literally anything becomes possible. The Holocaust taught us that and sadly few remember it.

Elie Wiesel, according to a recent NYTimes piece, has lost all of his life’s savings to Bernie Madoff as well as almost $12 million which was invested by his charity. He maintains “psychopath” is too nice a word for Madoff. Both Wiesel and his wife are octogenarians. He still has his position at Boston University and hopefully his work on the lecture circuit will enable him to continue. Justus quidem tu es, Domine, si disputem tecum: verumtamen justa loquar ad te: Quare via impiorum prosperatur? Jer. xii.1.

Archbishop Chaput, while speaking in Toronto this this week, made a salient point concerning President Obama’s plans to remake the morality of this country: Obama was not elected to transform the nature of American culture especially on social policy. He was elected to address the economy. In fact, this is the only mandate he has and he has that only by 6% of the vote. The majority of Americans do not want socialized medicine of any kind; they believe in conscience clauses for health care workers when it comes to participating in barbaric anti-life practices; and they do not want a British style health care system a la Tom Daschle (which by the way is in tremendous disarray).  The nation is now beginning to pay for the panic and hysteria of the last two weeks of the election season, both economically, and now regarding social issues. The American bishops have a mammoth task which, as Chaput correctly observed, they haven’t prepared for: they need to educate clearly, with authority, without equivocation, what the Church teaches and why. It’s not going to be pretty. They will have to prepare themselves for taking tough stands especially when it comes to maintaining or taking back the catholicity of so-called Catholic hospitals and Catholic Charities. For insight into what this might look like take a look at this Chaput column of January 23, 2008.

Gateway pundit has photos of the St. Louis tea party protest.