“MacIntyre has sought, within the world we necessarily inhabit, to help us recover resources to enable us to act intelligibly. From beginning to end, he has attempted to help us locate those forms of life that can sustain lives well lived.”
“Jean Bethke Elshtain is rightly admired for her courage, for her trenchant critiques of peculiarly American pathologies, and for the wisdom of her political judgment. We think, however, that her current attempt morally to justify the Bush presidency’s “war against terrorism” along with its entire National Security Strategy”in Just War Against Terror: The Burden of American Power in a Violent World (Basic, 2003)”is nothing more than an uncritical justification of the ideology of America as empire. It is itself a deeply ideological work rather than one of careful and critical thought.”
“Catholicism is more than “doctrine” and theological reflection on doctrine. Rather it is habits and practices that take a lifetime to understand.”
“The Pope’s manner of argument promises to shift the character of the discussion for those more interested in extending it than in defending themselves. And it does so by being—despite its length—an inspiring text. (When that can be said of moral theology we are indeed on the threshold of something new.) What makes it new is the method employed: begin with Scripture, show how rational argument contributes to faith seeking understanding, and return to a church life and practice informed by Scripture. Jesus, not “natural law,” is the paradigm throughout”
“Christians in modernity thought their task was to make the Gospel intelligible to the world rather than to help the world understand why it could not be intelligible without the Gospel.”
“Neuhaus claims, for example, that theology is “the disciplined reflection upon transcendent truth and value that gives significance, perhaps eternal significance, to our lives.” But such an account of theology assumes that you know what “transcendence” means prior to knowing what it means for God to have called Israel from the nations. It is interesting, indeed, how little there is about the Church in The Naked Public Square. If you have transcendence I guess you really do not need the Church”.
“After carefully studying the Report of the Human Embryo Research Panel, we conclude that this recommendation is morally repugnant, entails grave injustice to innocent human beings, and constitutes an assault upon the foundational ideas of human dignity and rights essential to a free and decent society.”
“I write in defense of Paul Ramsey. In “Editorial Secrets Revealed,” Richard John Neuhaus insists that Paul Ramsey was “a bad writer” (Public Square, April). Ramsey is not here to defend himself, so I must rise to the occasion”.
“Yet like it or not John changed my life, and I think he ought to be held accountable for that. Reading Yoder made me a pacifist. It did so because John taught me that nonviolence was not just another “moral issue” but constitutes the heart of our worship of a crucified messiah.”
“Barth understood that recovering Christian speech is work and it is a work that the world literally cannot live without. The heart of Barth’s theology is the presumption that if we get God wrong, we get everything wrong: our politics, our science, our art, our very lives”.
