Moloch: A Call for a More Sensitive Reappraisal

Moloch!

“If men became pregnant, abortion would be a sacrament!” Such full sexual equality presently eludes us at the level of mere biology; yet, we can even now begin to explore spiritually the sacred dimensions of abortion. Indeed, even within Western “civilization” there are ancient traditions that can aid us in an effort to reconstruct a radical, yet sacramental, view of abortion.

In order to develop a spirituality of abortion and facilitate dialogue between pre- and post-Christian traditions, let us begin with an examination of Gnosticism.

Not Just For Catholics: Pro-Life Secularism & The Preservation Of Our Republic

To a couple of sparring partners from another place who find my pro-life views too much like sacralized politics:

Gentlemen, I don’t hold pro-life views to “get to heaven” or due to an inability to distinguish the secular from the sacred – I struggle against a culture of death to keep earth from resembling hell in ways that are quite easily to foresee and are playing out before our eyes.

 

Challenges of Justice, Peace-Making & “Those People’s” “Endless Conflicts”

Assistant Secretary Moose was away from Washington, so Prudence Bushnell, the acting assistant secretary, was made the director of the task force that managed the Rwanda evacuation. Her focus, like Rawson’s, was on the fate of U.S. citizens. “I felt very strongly that my first obligation was to the Americans,” she recalls. “I was sorry about the Rwandans, of course, but my job was to get our folks out … Then again, people didn’t know that it was a genocide. What I was told was ‘Look, Pru, these people do this from time to time.’ We thought we’d be right back.”

From Samantha Powers’ “Bystanders to Genocide” about the American embassy’s response to the genocide in Rwanda

In the VP debate on Thursday one of Senator Biden’s little-remarked gaffes (yes, their name was legion) was his claim of how the Sunni and Shia in Iraq have been at daggers drawn for over 700 years. This is wrong on the facts - most of what became contemporary Iraq did not have a Shia majority presence until mass conversions in the 19th century. For much of their shared history the Sunni and Shia Arabs of Iraq were not hostile to one another. But this is more than just trivia. Senator Biden’s wrong-headed understanding informed his plan for an “ethnic partition” of Iraq he attempted to impose last year on that country (which also missed the small fact that there is no ethnic difference between the Sunni and the Shia since they are both Arabs – Sunni and Shia are religious differences that cut across ethnic and tribal lines for the Arabs, Kurds and Turcomans in Iraq). Senator Biden’s recent contention that Iraqis are captive to an all but unbreakable cycle of violence is meant to ease the American public’s sense that, having invaded Iraq and overthrown Saddam Hussein’s thoroughly corrupt and repressive (but functioning) B’ath party-state, we have no further obligations (or even possibility) to establish an effective government there. However, as bad is his mixture of incorrect history and de facto endorsement of ethnic cleansing, Senator Obama has gone further still, arguing last year that he would consider a U.S. withdraw necessary even in the face of a genocide breaking out in Iraq.