{"id":938,"date":"2008-12-12T13:02:04","date_gmt":"2008-12-12T13:02:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/viamedia\/2008\/12\/news-flashes.html"},"modified":"2008-12-12T13:02:04","modified_gmt":"2008-12-12T13:02:04","slug":"news-flashes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2008\/12\/news-flashes.html","title":{"rendered":"News Flashes"},"content":{"rendered":"

As most of you all already know, Avery Cardinal Dulles, SJ passed away last night.
\nFirst Things has a notice, as well as links to the many articles Cardinal Dulles wrote for the magazine.<\/a>
\nMore at America.<\/a>
\nA comprehensive Dulles page, sponsored by the Cardinal Ratzinger Fan Club.<\/a>
\nThis morning, the CDF released an instruction on biomedical research, Dignitatis Personae<\/em>. The USCCB has a page on the document, including the text, a summary, and a FAQ. It’s all very helpful.<\/a>
\nBack to America, Fr. Drew Christiansen, SJ, has another helpful, positive summary of the document. <\/a>
\nHe ends his article, which had begun with references to CS Lewis, with this concern:<\/p>\n

The instruction\u2019s subject matter is technical. It offers a sustained and serious treatment of vital problems. Just as the sciences have their own languages, so moral theology needs technical terminology and patterns of argument. The problems the congregation addresses are pressing; but the obstacles to communication are great. The language of natural law has limited power today to turn back the tide of technological transgression we face. Pastorally, the church needs to find an improved rhetoric to engage the postmodern mind, and in its apologetics it must experiment with varied genres of persuasion to affect the fluid imaginations of the Digital Age. Who will be the C. S. Lewis for our day, defending human nature and celebrating the Christian vision of life for the 21st century?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I agree, but I also think that the obstacle to “defending human nature” in the wake of abuses of science comes not only from inadequate rhetoric but what seems to me to be an almost absolute closedness to the question on the “other” side.\u00a0 Questions of human dignity and uniqueness are often consigned to the dustbin of\u00a0 “moralisms” which are subjective and must not be imposed, references to which must necessarily be evidence of the questioners mythical, non-scientific worldview.
\nAnother excellent note from Yuval Levin at NRO:<\/a><\/p>\n

One of the great ironies of the stem cell debates of the last few years has been that some of the most serious attention to scientific detail and reality has come from Catholic circles, while some of the most wide-eyed messianic faith-healing talk has come from liberal political (and sometimes even scientific) circles. There is another example of the former today, with a new Vatican document<\/a> about reproductive technologies and bioethics. I\u2019m not a Catholic and am in no position to speak to the theological components of the document, and I don\u2019t agree with all of its conclusions (on IVF, for instance) but its treatment of the latest scientific developments and of the related ethical questions is exceptionally good, and its attitude\u2014very pro-science and very clear about ethical boundaries and the reasons for them, with arguments that reach well beyond Catholic theology\u2014is very impressive.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As most of you all already know, Avery Cardinal Dulles, SJ passed away last night. First Things has a notice, as well as links to the many articles Cardinal Dulles wrote for the magazine. More at America. A comprehensive Dulles page, sponsored by the Cardinal Ratzinger Fan Club. This morning, the CDF released an instruction…<\/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-938","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"yoast_head":"\nNews Flashes - 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\/12\/news-flashes.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"News Flashes - Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"As most of you all already know, Avery Cardinal Dulles, SJ passed away last night. 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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\/938","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=938"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/938\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=938"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=938"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=938"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}