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SDR
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Location: San Francisco
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 Posted: Mon Apr 18, 2005 7:21 pm Post subject: |
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In the spirit of "do unto others," and its flip side "we always see in others our own weaknesses," may I suggest that persons -- such as the president of the United States of America -- who decry others as "evil," might just possibly be capable of that brand of malfeasance, themselves?
In any event, here we have another example of the good that religious leaders are capable of, when they are not "innocently" finding prototypes of "sin" in the Good Book, with which to meddle in the lives of the truly innocent:
www.truthout.org/issues_05/041805EB.shtml
SDR
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"I'm the commander . . . see, I do not need to explain why I say things. That's the interesting thing about being the president. Maybe somebody needs to explain to me why they say something, but I don't feel like I owe anybody an explanation." GWB |
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SDR
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| Posted: Tue Apr 19, 2005 5:25 pm Post subject: |
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". . .all he knows to do is condemn, condemn, condemn. . ."
Benedict XVI. Oh, well; it's apparently the spirit of the New Century.
Maybe next time, Kevin.
www.truthout.org/docs_2005/041905A.shtml
SDR
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"I'm the commander . . . see, I do not need to explain why I say things. That's the interesting thing about being the president. Maybe somebody needs to explain to me why they say something, but I don't feel like I owe anybody an explanation." GWB |
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Kevin
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Location: Eugene, Oregon
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| Posted: Tue Apr 19, 2005 11:43 pm Post subject: |
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Transitional...
But toward what vision of human dignity, in a dangerously overstressed biosphere where human actions in statistical mass, which can only be measured and predicted scientifically, more and more often overweigh the immediate good in ethical individuals?
From the same source:
"He used a homily at a Mass before the conclave to issue a stern warning that godless modern trends must be rejected." |
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Richard Haut
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Joined: 18 Apr 2004
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Location: Nice, France
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| Posted: Wed Apr 20, 2005 4:03 am Post subject: |
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Godless modern trends ?
http://www.cafepress.com/ratzfanclub.3566569
I am not aware of T-shirts being available supporting any of the other Cardinals.
Happy Clappers in Britain, Fundamentalists in the US - and now a hardliner in Rome.
Anybody remember John XXIII these days ?
| Quote: | Consult not your fears but your hopes and your dreams. Think not about your frustrations, but about your unfulfilled potential. Concern yourself not with what you tried and failed in, but with what it is still possible for you to do.
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Richard Haut has worked with the architectural profession for over 25 years and produces the weekly Richard Haut's Competitions, which has given architects details of many thousands of projects for which they can apply across Britain and Europe. |
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Architorture
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| Posted: Wed Apr 20, 2005 9:03 am Post subject: |
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SDR
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| Posted: Wed Apr 20, 2005 10:33 am Post subject: |
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Well. . .he's a "simple, humble worker in the Lord's vineyard."
Just ask him.
Oh, and a uniter, not a divider -- where have we heard that, before?
www.truthout.org/docs_2005/042005Z.shtml
SDR
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"I'm the commander . . . see, I do not need to explain why I say things. That's the interesting thing about being the president. Maybe somebody needs to explain to me why they say something, but I don't feel like I owe anybody an explanation." GWB |
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Richard Haut
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| Posted: Wed Apr 20, 2005 4:27 pm Post subject: |
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Take a careful look at some of the things that the new Pope has said:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/4464113.stm
It makes for interesting reading.
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Richard Haut has worked with the architectural profession for over 25 years and produces the weekly Richard Haut's Competitions, which has given architects details of many thousands of projects for which they can apply across Britain and Europe. |
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Architorture
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| Posted: Wed Apr 20, 2005 9:16 pm Post subject: |
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| rock music? |
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SDR
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| Posted: Wed Apr 20, 2005 10:19 pm Post subject: |
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Dream? or nightmare. . .
I thought the comments about a "relativist dictatorship' were a little scary. I'll take relativistic thinking over absolutist, any day. Thinking things through -- from scratch, every day, if necessary -- beats staying stuck to two thousand-year-old dogma, in my opinion.
When your position forces you to prevaricate -- declaring both an intention to bring people together, and to hold absolutely to the strict interpretation of one set of beliefs -- it should serve as a sign that something is wrong.
SDR
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"I'm the commander . . . see, I do not need to explain why I say things. That's the interesting thing about being the president. Maybe somebody needs to explain to me why they say something, but I don't feel like I owe anybody an explanation." GWB |
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Richard Haut
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| Posted: Thu Apr 21, 2005 3:03 pm Post subject: |
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In ethical terms there have to be absolutes.
In good and peaceful times such absolutes merely stay in the background.
However when faced with evil, then it is the duty of a priest to restate and to stand by those absolutes.
Yes, he will bring people together - many, many millions.
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SDR
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| Posted: Sat Apr 23, 2005 12:48 pm Post subject: |
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Well, the real lesson of life, for me, is that the world, both the natural and the man-made, are far more complex than can be easily grasped, and that our natural tendency, which is to attempt to "simplify" it to the degree necessary for comprehension and survival -- ie, Good vs Evil -- leaves out a lot of Truth. The truth, in stark terms, is, and perhaps "should be," relative -- reflecting the cosmic truths addressed by Dr Einstein, for instance? Man's attempt to impose his own conception of "moral order" -- in the name of one of his many gods, or by any other argument -- seems a futile, impertinent and irrelevant act, a meaningless whisper in the magnificent wind of the Universe. If we must worship, let us worship the universe as we find it, not as we would so vainly have it.
In any event, a "morality" which casts out whole groups of innocent humans, cannot possibly bespeak Truth, it certainly seems to me, no matter the "justification". . .
Maureen Dowd (herself given to occasional oversimplification) quotes, near the end of her column, a letter-writer who addresses the issue of "moral relativism."
www.nytimes.com/2005/04/23/opinion/23dowd.html?th&emc=th
SDR
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"I'm the commander . . . see, I do not need to explain why I say things. That's the interesting thing about being the president. Maybe somebody needs to explain to me why they say something, but I don't feel like I owe anybody an explanation." GWB |
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Richard Haut
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| Posted: Sat Apr 23, 2005 1:47 pm Post subject: |
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Truth ?
If you are not Catholic, why does it bother you ?
Moral relativism is not doing too good a job in America. Interesting to see film of your police force handcuffing a five year-old child. As her familys lawyer said of your nation - where are we going ? When one looks at what is done in Iraq - especially the latest Salvador Option - perhaps people around the world can see where you are going.
Fascists like Bush go for soft targets - where there is a barroom response, just like Hitler. When Bush turns on the gay community - when it is convenient for him to take attention off whatever latest horror he indulges in - it will not be a question of disagreement or disapproval, but of persecution and murder.
Nobody is interested if Americans are in danger from their own regime - you, a free nation, allowed it. Other peoples will look for moral guidance from those that they believe have a record of honesty and sincerity. (Or, as a sarcastic British paper put it - should Wolfowitz have been made Pope).
| Quote: | In Germany they first came for the Communists,
and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Communist.
Then they came for the Jews,
and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Jew.
Then they came for the trade unionists,
and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a trade unionist.
Then they came for the Catholics,
and I didn't speak up because I was a Protestant.
Then they came for me Ñ
and by that time no one was left to speak up. |
- Pastor Martin Niemoller
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Richard Haut has worked with the architectural profession for over 25 years and produces the weekly Richard Haut's Competitions, which has given architects details of many thousands of projects for which they can apply across Britain and Europe. |
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Richard Haut
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| Posted: Sat Apr 23, 2005 2:22 pm Post subject: |
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on the other hand, if Sidney Blumenthal is right, then we all have a problem:
http://- abuse alert -- abuse alert -/article8633.htm
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Richard Haut has worked with the architectural profession for over 25 years and produces the weekly Richard Haut's Competitions, which has given architects details of many thousands of projects for which they can apply across Britain and Europe. |
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SDR
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| Posted: Sat Apr 23, 2005 3:08 pm Post subject: |
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"If I am not Catholic, why does it bother me?"
The remainder of your posts, and links, more than answer that question, don't they? If I were to ask you "If you're not American, why do Bush's statements and policies bother you?" -- I'm sure I'd agree with your answer!
The spread of anti-social dogma, including the effort to influence the democratic process in foreign lands, must be resisted, as much as war, famine or pestilence must be resisted. A "one-size-fits-all" social agenda is demonstrably anti-social; what is right for one man is not necessarily right for another. And when rights are denied, not on the basis of actual wrongdoing, but rather to fulfill someone's religious philosophy, THAT amounts to "wrongdoing," in my book.
Are you aware that some licensed pharmacists, practicing their profession in various places in the United States, have begun to refuse to dispense legally-obtained birth control prescriptions, based presumably upon personally-held beliefs, and encouraged no doubt by the increasing drum-beat of "right-to-life" religious fervor? This is a new and dangerous trend; how many non-religious people will have their lives affected adversely, before an attempt is made to curb this fanaticism -- and will it be too late, when such an effort is finally undertaken?
As for "honesty and sincerity": Bush has managed to convince many Americans, most of them honest and sincere enough, themselves, of HIS honesty and sincerity; yet he plans, or permits, any number of harmful, even illegal, actions (as I think you'll agree). Doesn't this point to honesty and sincerity as amounting to less than "a full measure" of what is required to assure the common good, for all?
SDR
_________________
"I'm the commander . . . see, I do not need to explain why I say things. That's the interesting thing about being the president. Maybe somebody needs to explain to me why they say something, but I don't feel like I owe anybody an explanation." GWB |
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SDR
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Location: San Francisco
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| Posted: Sat Apr 23, 2005 3:39 pm Post subject: |
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Anyone -- even a pope -- can be both honest and sincere, and wrong. I am sorry to have to reiterate this, but he is only a man -- and a "humble" one, at that, according to him. So indeed are every other one of the thousands of leaders, including those "beatified," who have preceded him, in all of man's many and varied faiths and belief systems.
For any man to place himself above others, physically, socially, philosophically, spiritually, or in any other way -- even with the acquiescence of those who would willingly follow -- is obscene. To do so "humbly," and only because he is "called" by others, and only in the "service" of a book, and a religion, and a deity erected to be worshipped, does not alter that obscenity. Freud could not have been entirely wrong to refer to religion as society's "mass neurosis."
Let us work to deconstruct these strange heirarchies, in an orderly way -- we are long past needing them. When men were little more than superstitious and threatened animals, they needed something "big" to give them hope. When their numbers were small, and the survival of families, towns, even large numbers were certainly threatened with possible decimation and even extinction, it made sense to erect a mechanism whose purpose was to encourage maximum propagation.
Today, sexual function, so basic a part of our animal and social make-up, is in need of re-direction. To deny that it is there, to pretend that it can be "turned off," especially in the young, and to pretend that procreation needs to be encouraged, is to deny the biological, psychological, and societal realities. Absolute "principles" -- particularly if inherited from a time centuries back, when conditions and realities were very different -- can be much more harmful than beneficial. To pretend that there are "rules for men for all time" is a pathetic and cruel misuse of the energies of any human institution -- and the Church is surely amog the most powerful and influential of such institutions, today.
So much for "absolutism." The Emporer has no clothes. Let him, and we, look in the mirror, and rcognize and deal with what is True.
SDR
_________________
"I'm the commander . . . see, I do not need to explain why I say things. That's the interesting thing about being the president. Maybe somebody needs to explain to me why they say something, but I don't feel like I owe anybody an explanation." GWB |
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