{"id":396,"date":"2008-01-22T07:40:54","date_gmt":"2008-01-22T07:40:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/viamedia\/2008\/01\/from-around-the-web.html"},"modified":"2008-01-22T07:40:54","modified_gmt":"2008-01-22T07:40:54","slug":"from-around-the-web","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2008\/01\/from-around-the-web.html","title":{"rendered":"From around the web"},"content":{"rendered":"

Various posts and points pertinent to today’s anniversary:
\nMike Aquilina reminds us that times have not changed – and neither has our responsibility. <\/a><\/p>\n

The Church Fathers were familiar with this line of thinking. In pagan Rome, a child did not achieve personhood until recognized by the head of the family, the father. When the mother had given birth, a midwife placed the child on the floor and summoned the father. He examined the child with his criteria of selection in mind.
\nWas the child his? If the man suspected his wife of adultery \u2014 ancient Rome\u2019s favorite pastime \u2014 he might reject the child without so much as a glance.
\nIf the child was an \u201codious daughter\u201d (the common Roman phrase for female offspring), he would likely turn on his heel and leave the room.
\nIf the child was \u201cdefective\u201d in any way, he would do the same. As the philosopher Seneca said: \u201cWhat is good must be set apart from what is good for nothing.\u201d
\nLife or death? It all depended upon the will of a man. Human life began when the child was accepted into society. A man did not \u201chave a child.\u201d He \u201ctook a child.\u201d The father \u201craised up\u201d the child by picking it up from the floor.
\nThose non-persons who were left on the floor \u2014 while their mothers watched from a birthing chair \u2014 would be drowned immediately, or exposed to scavenging animals at the town dump.
\nAgainst these customs, the Church consistently taught that life begins at conception and should continue till natural death. In such matters, Christianity contradicted pagan mores on almost every point. What were virtuous acts to the Romans and Greeks \u2014 contraception, abortion, infanticide, suicide, euthanasia \u2014 were abominations to the Christians.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

(A useful book on the subject: When Children Became People: The Birth of Childhood in Early Christianity)<\/a>
\nA Catholic-sponsored debate between Peter Kreeft and a pro-choice philosopher occurred last Friday\u00a0on the University of \u00a0Colorado Boulder\u00a0campus. A report:<\/a><\/p>\n

Closing the evening, Boonin thanked the Aquinas Institute <\/a>for hosting him.\u00a0 “There is something quite extraordinary about the fact that the Aquinas Institute invited me to speak this weekend, giving me equal time with a national representative of the views that obviously they are passionately committed to.”
\nFather Kevin Augustyn, pastor of St. Thomas Aquinas Parish, closed the meeting with a description of the lecture series\u2019 aim.
\n“Reason can lead to the threshold of faith, and once across that threshold of faith, then reason still has a role for us to understand God’s word and God’s ways in our lives.\u00a0 The Aquinas Institute for Catholic Thought exists for that reason, for the search for truth.”
\nSpeaking to CNA at a post-debate reception, Father Augustyn further explained the institute\u2019s goals.
\n\u201cThe Aquinas Institute for Catholic Thought is basically our arm for outreach to both Catholic students that come to us, and the university at large.\u00a0 We’re trying to engage an important secular university with the Catholic faith.\u00a0 How do you do that?\u00a0 You begin with dialogue, and what we have in common, and we believe reason is on our side,\u201d he said.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Kevin Jones has an on-the-scene report of the event and a post offering kudos to the renewed Catholic Campus Ministry at the university<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Various posts and points pertinent to today’s anniversary: Mike Aquilina reminds us that times have not changed – and neither has our responsibility. The Church Fathers were familiar with this line of thinking. In pagan Rome, a child did not achieve personhood until recognized by the head of the family, the father. When the mother…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":180,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-396","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"yoast_head":"\nFrom around the web - Via Media<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2008\/01\/from-around-the-web.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"From around the web - Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Various posts and points pertinent to today’s anniversary: Mike Aquilina reminds us that times have not changed – and neither has our responsibility. 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The Catholicism comes from her side. Amy grew up in a number of places - Indiana - Washington, DC - Lubbock Texas - Arlington, Virginia - DeKalb, Illinois - Lawrence, Kansas - and Knoxville, Tennessee, where the family settled in 1973. She attended Knoxville Catholic High School, then the University of Tennessee where she majored in history. She received an MA in Church History from Vanderbilt University, where she wrote a thesis on the changing role of women in 19th century American Protestantism, and the ways Scripture was used to justify those changes. She worked as as a teacher in Catholic high schools and a Parish Director of Religious Education and started writing for the diocesan press - the Florida Catholic - in 1988. Amy has written columns for Our Sunday Visitor and Catholic News Service at times over the past twenty years. Her articles have been published in venues ranging from Our Sunday Visitor to the New York Times to Commonweal. She has written 17 books. 18, if you included the as yet tragically unpublished novel. Amy has five children, ranging in age from 26 to 4 and was married to Michael Dubruiel, who died unexpectedly in February 2009. She lives in Birmingham, Alabama.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/author\/awelborn"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/396","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/180"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=396"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/396\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=396"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=396"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=396"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}