The Kinights Templar and the Shroud of Turin

The Shroud of Turin

Now we know the true story behind what was once a mystery and a field in which there have been all kinds of theories, conjectures and hypotheses. And this, thanks to L'Osservatore Romano, the Vatican newspaper, which on Sunday published a preview of the forthcoming book, I templari e la sindone di Cristo, by Barbara Frale, a researcher in the Vatican Secret Archives.

The Knights Templar, as it is well-known, had been accused of worshipping idols, in particular a “bearded figure,” called Baphomet, but in reality the object they had secretly venerated was the Shroud, that is the linen cloth which is kept in the royal chapel of the Cathedral of Saint John the Baptist in Turin, Italy, and which is believed by many—myself included—to be the cloth placed on Jesus of Nazareth at the time of His burial.

The Shroud, as the Vatican’s medieval specialist explains in her book, had disappeared in the sack of Constantinople in 1204 during the Fourth Crusade, and did not surface again until the middle of the fourteenth century. Its fate in those years had always puzzled historians. But Barbara Frale’s study of the trial of the Knights Templar had brought to light

a document in which Arnaut Sabbatier, a young Frenchman who entered the order in 1287, testified that as part of his initiation he was taken to “a secret place to which only the brothers of the Temple had access”. There he was shown “a long linen cloth on which was impressed the figure of a man” and instructed to venerate the image by kissing its feet three times.

The Knights Templar had rescued that linen cloth

to ensure that it did not fall into the hands of heretical groups such as the Cathars, who claimed that Christ did not have a true human body, only the appearance of a man, and could therefore not have died on the Cross and been resurrected.

Barabara Frale says her discovery vindicates an hypothesis first put forward by the British historian Ian Wilson in 1978, though at the time this theory was still to be proved.

This book gives the Knights Templar their due and restores the honor of the most powerful monastic military order of the Middle Ages.

In August 21st 2008, L’Osservatore Romano also published for the first time the prayer the Knights Templar composed when “unjustly imprisoned,” in which they appealed to the Virgin Mary to persuade “our enemies” to abandon “calumnies and lies” and revert to “truth and charity.” The prayer was further proof that the order was not heretical. In that article Barbara Frale maintained that it was untrue that the knights were guilty of “decadence, heresy and immoral practices,” that is the reasons why the order was suppressed in 1314, and its members were arrested, tortured and executed.

Earthquake in central Italy (updated)

BREAKING NEWS
A powerful earthquake measuring 6.3 on the Richter scale struck at 3:32 am (0132 GMT) near the medieval city of L’Aquila, in the mountainous region of Abruzzo, 60 miles (95 kilometers) north of Rome. At least 20 people, including five children, were killed and many buildings (3,000 to 10,000) in the city’s historic center were severely damaged or destroyed. The quake was the latest in a series of jolts that struck the area over the past two days.

Massimo Cialente, mayor of L'Aquila, said around 100,000 people had left their homes as a result of the damage. Guido Bertolaso, the head of civil protection, said this is “the worst tragedy since the start of the millennium.”

See also here, here and here.

And here is a CNN video report:

-----

UPDATE - Monday, April 6, 2009, 7:30 pm 

- OVER 100 DEAD, 1,500 INJURED
- 'HUGE' ARTISTIC DAMAGE
- Quake: predictions impossible
- Abruzzo Earthquake – 100 Die, Hundreds Injured and Thousands Evacuated

- (ANSA) - L'Aquila, April 6 - Premier Silvio Berlusconi said Monday that around 1,500 people were injured in the L'Aquila earthquake that killed at least 92.
''At the moment 4,000 rescuers are at work and concentrating on extracting people from the rubble,'' said Berlusconi, who cancelled a trip to Moscow to travel to L'Aquila where he surveyed the damage from a helicopter.
The premier said a camp with 2,000 tents, each capable of housing 8-10 people, was currently being set up in the city for those who had lost their homes in the disaster, while around 4,000 beds in hotels in the area had also been reserved for survivors.
''The camp should be ready be tonight,'' Berlusconi told journalists at a press conference, during which another small quake was felt.
''The fundamental thing I want to say is that nobody will be left alone,'' he said.
The premier appealed to survivors not to remain in damaged houses.
''Nobody can tell if there will be further quakes in the next few hours or days,'' he said.

- 100 dead in Italian quake
- Death toll in Italy quake hits 50
- Witnesses describe what happened

What I dislike most ...

“ “What terrifies you most in purity,” I asked? “Haste,” William answered. ” 

—Umberto Eco, The Name of the Rose


What I dislike most about the political attitudes and behaviors of a certain kind of “political activists” is the way some people tend to extremize their views, which often leads them, in the best cases, to a certain Manichaeism or, in the worst cases, to what I would call the intellectualization of political hatred. They never concede an inch to their opponents, whom they see as inherently “evil” or “immoral” or “stupid,” whatever they think, say and do.

They are natural and irreconcilable enemies not merely of political transformism and opportunism, which obviously would not be a bad thing in itself, but of common sense and also of a sense of proportion.

They seem to be fascinated by the myth of their own political purity, or what they firmly believe to be such. To these “true Conservatives,” without any ifs and buts, of course, or “true Liberals,” etc., I would like to dedicate the above quote.

Trusting to the future

They seem to be quite happy with the end result (“a turning point in our pursuit of global economic recovery,” said President Barack Obama). Let’s all cross our fingers and pray that they are right.

The new neocon alliance with Obama

Is there a “neo-isolationist” tendency on both the left and right wings of the American political spectrum? As Foreign Policy’s Laura Rozen has reported, the founders of Foreign Policy Initiative, a new advocacy group, think so—and it would be naïve, as far as we presently know, to think differently. So some prominent neocons such as former Iraq Coalition Provisional Authority spokesman Dan Senor, Weekly Standard editor William Kristol, and national security writer Robert Kagan of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, have vowed to counter that tendency and decided to intervene in support of President Obama’s Afghanistan policy.

And this is what Jacob Heilbrunn—the author of the newly released, They Knew They Were Right: the Rise of the Neocons, and a senior editor at the National Interest—has to say in The Huffington Post:

It's clear that that neoconservatives are staking out a new course and want to retain an influential voice in foreign policy. Their latest strategy is to move closer to Obama. Kagan has already expressed his admiration for what he sees as Obama's determination to ensure that America remains No. 1 around the globe.
The idea that the intellectual champions of the Iraq War are now trying to reach an alliance with Obama is certainly a tribute to neocon audacity. But it's also an inevitable development. The neocons have always been interventionists first, then conservatives. In fact, many traditional conservatives argue that there isn't much that's conservative about neoconservatism. In any case, the neocons aren't going away.
For now, the founding of the Foreign Policy Initiative suggests that there will be a fierce battle for the soul of the Obama administration between liberal hawks and neocons, on the one side, and between anti-interventionist progressives, on the other, over policy towards Afghanistan, Russia, China, and Iran.
Who's going to win it?

An interesting question, don’t you think?

Obama links Chrysler aid to Fiat (Updated)

BREAKING NEWS:

For Chrysler, America’s third biggest car manufacturer, the clock is ticking. The Obama administration has told the deeply troubled automaker it has 30 days of financial aid in which to complete its proposed deal for an alliance with Italy’s Fiat. And Chrysler has responded that it has reached an agreement on a framework of a global alliance with Fiat.

Chrysler’s troubles worsened last fall when the meltdown on Wall Street hit. So most analysts said the US automaker had little hope of surviving as a standalone company. Italy’s Fiat, in turn, has its own troubles, but it is still true that it is at the moment the stronger of the two and a recognized world leader in the area of innovative and environmentally friendly products, thanks to its chief, Sergio Marchionne, who has pulled the company back from the brink collapse since taking over in 2004.

So, in January, Fiat and Chrysler decided to lend a hand to one another. And yesterday the US President Barack Obama linked Chrysler aid to Fiat and made it clear that any aid to the American automaker would depend on it striking a partnership with Italy’s Fiat. “Chrysler needs a partner,” he said, and “if they are able to reach a solid agreement which protects American consumers, we will consider lending them $6 billion […] if no such accord is reached and if no other viable partnership surfaces, we will not be able to justify the investment of further taxpayer money to keep Chrysler operating.” Fiat, he added, “is ready to transfer its cutting-edge technology to Chrysler and, after having worked closely with my team, has promised to build new, fuel-efficient cars and motors here in America.”

A Chrysler-Fiat combination would be the world’s sixth-largest by vehicle sales, behind Ford Motor Co.

UPDATE - MARCH 31, 2009, 3:00 pm

1. Fiat CEO Sergio Marchionne is in the United States to hammer out the details of the partnership with Chrysler which will allow the Detroit No.3 to qualify for up to $6 billion in government loans.

2. Corriere della Sera:

Sergio Marchionne, who has collected more than his fair share of plaudits, was stunned. He said: “I want to publicly thank President Barack Obama, on behalf of the entire management team, for his words of appreciation for the work done in the past five years, and for his encouragement to finalise a solid alliance between Chrysler and Fiat. Talks with the task force have been hard but fair. We are convinced that we can achieve a result that will offer a credible future to this crucial sector of the economy. We are extremely happy that Fiat can play a key role in this effort”.

Here is The People of Freedom

The three-day founding congress, with about 6,000 delegates gathered in Rome to baptize the Il Popolo della Libertà (People of Freedom) party, the new conservative party which is a merger of Berlusconi’s Forza Italia and the rightwing Alleanza Nazionale, is over. It’s an important event, but not an absolute novelty, since the two parties ran together and won under the PDL label in last year’s general election. In other words, the new party was already a fait accompli, even though its “official baptism” has certainly marked another highly important step for both the conservative coalition (though only two of the three main groups on the right are included in the PDL) and the Italian political system as a whole. However, the point is that the People of Freedom is expected to make the Italians a stronger force in the European Parliament’s largest party grouping—the conservative EPP-ED—after the next European elections (the latest opinion polls gave the new party a 44 per cent share of the national vote).

As it was widely predicted, however, the event sounded like an unending and ecstatic hymn of praise to the Cavaliere, elected by acclamation as the first president of the new party, which provoked much annoyance among the opponents, in Italy and outside, who rant about the supposed “cult of personality” that surrounds Silvio Berlusconi. What they seem to forget is the messianic cult that surrounds “their” Barack Obama, but it doesn’t really matter, because their proverbial ability to opportunistically exploit this kind of charges (ad usum delphini, of course) is well known.

But, perhaps, what Berlusconi’s fiercest opponents most disliked was this passage of his conclusion speech: “The constitution must be enriched and revitalised ... The powers of the prime minister are almost non-existent ... The country needs to be governed.” Which is the plain truth, as they themselves well know. He also said that he would seek the support of the center left opposition in changing the constitution—which is a mere illusion, and he knows it—but would go alone if it did not co-operate. If I should express my candid opinion I should say “better alone than in bad company,” or in a company that can kill you.

SMS Venice

SMS Venice (Saint Mark’s Square) is a campaign launched last year and aimed to help save Venice’s art heritage by receiving SMS and Internet funding. This year’s goals are to restore the city’s famed Rialto Bridge and three historic churches: San Giorgio Maggiore, San Giuseppe and the Chiesa dei Gesuiti, as well as the Scuola di San Rocco with its famed Tintoretto paintings.

The fund raising campaign was launched last Thursday at the Theatre La Fenice, with a great charity concert, starring the wonderful voice of Madeleine Peyroux, the jazz pop artist now considered the new Billie Holiday. For this occasion, she presented in a worldwide sneak preview her new album “Bare Bones,” produced by Larry Klein, Walter Becker and Joe Henry.

As part of the campaign, last year five concerts had been held in St. Mark’s by Momix, Elton John, Giovanni Allevi, Joan Baez and Vinicio Capossela. The high spot of this year’s SMS campaign will be a Simple Minds concert in St Mark’s in July.

To support the initiative visit the new SMS Venice website and click on the how to donate link.

Harvard researchers agree with Pope Benedict on condoms in Africa

Well, I know, this is a minefield, but shouldn’t blogging be, in itself, a continuous challenge to prevailing views of what is worth debating and how (with what purposes and inclinations) it should be debated, of what is arguable and what is not, and so on? So, here we go and let’s strike a blow for a man who dared to say that “the scourge [of AIDS] cannot be resolved by distributing condoms,” and that by doing so we “risk worsening the problem.” Which provoked a most predictable and well-rehearsed chorus of boos from left-wing politicians, mainstream media and activist groups. By the way, perhaps Frank Pastore is right when he writes, in a must-read post at Townhall.com., that “activists can’t help throwing condoms, either at those who oppose their policy, or at populations dying of AIDS in Africa and around the world.”

But, after all, how could it be a surprise? Who knew that … Harvard agrees with the pope? Activists certainly didn’t, neither did Pastore, as he himself acknowledges, nor did I: Condoms don’t lower the HIV-infection rate, they spread AIDS, instead! Have you ever heard this before? And it’s also hard to believe, as Pastore fairly points out, that there’s a classroom or newsroom in America—and elsewhere, in the Western world, I would dare to add—where this has ever been discussed or broadcast. So, please, don’t waste your time, stop being so damn argumentative, just read what Edward C. Green, director of the AIDS Prevention Research Project at the Harvard Center for Population and Development Studies, had to say in an interview with Kathryn Jean Lopez, editor of National Review Online:

We have found no consistent associations between condom use and lower HIV-infection rates, which, 25 years into the pandemic, we should be seeing if this intervention was working.
The pope is correct, or put it a better way, the best evidence we have supports the pope’s comments. He stresses that condoms have been proven to not be effective at the level of population. There is a consistent association shown by our best studies, including the US-funded Demographic Health Surveys, between greater availability and use of condoms and higher (not lower) HIV-infection rates. This may be due in part to a phenomenon known as risk compensation, meaning that when one uses a risk-reduction technology such as condoms, one often loses the benefit (reduction in risk) by compensating or taking greater chances than one would take without the risk-reduction technology.

I also noticed that the pope said monogamy was the best single answer to African AIDS, rather than abstinence. The best and latest empirical evidence indeed shows that reduction in multiple and concurrent sexual partners is the most important single behavior change associated with reduction in HIV-infection rates (the other major factor is male circumcision).

Doctor in mid-surgery heart scare

Claudio Vitale, a 59-year-old brain surgeon, was carrying out a delicate operation to remove a brain tumour in a Hospital in Naples, Italy, when he began having chest pains. Well, even when he realized, some minutes later, that he was having an angina attack, he refused to stop the surgery, despite his team’s urging and the pain worsening. “I couldn’t leave the patient at such a delicate moment,” he later told La Repubblica newspaper. “I’m not a hero,” he added, “I was only doing my duty.” After finishing the surgery, the doctor had an angioplasty operation to treat his attack.

However unusual and unlikely this might seem, in the light of the times we live in, such things still keep on happening upon this planet. Besides, this shows that, after all, it's not true that “good news is no news.”

Both men are now said to be recovering well.

Together around Mary

Today is the Fest of Annunciation, that is the revelation to Mary, the mother of Jesus, by the angel Gabriel that she would conceive a child to be born the Son of God. 

In the occasion Lebanon’s government launches a joint Christian-Muslim celebration in honor of Mary, who is venerated in both communities: the first “Islamic-Christian Day.” “Together around Mary, Our Lady,” is the title chosen for a celebration which will be more of a national event than a religious one. 

Frankly it seems to me to be a very good idea. H/T The Catholic Key Blog and Catholic Information Network.

Twice a year, the miracle ...

Holy Trinity Church in Barsham, Suffolk, England: it is not a scene from an Indiana Jones film, but a stirring piece of visual synchronicity that dates back to the 1300s, when a narrow window was built in the church tower … At the spring and autumn equinox, the setting sun hits the window and illuminates a carving of Christ on the Cross for a few unforgettable minutes. This spectacle was only rediscovered recently by the village church’s assistant curate, after having been completely forgotten for centuries. H/T Over the Water

What A Wonderful World

I see trees of green, red roses too.
I see them bloom, for me and you.
And I think to myself... what a wonderful world.

I see skies of blue, and clouds of white.
The bright blessed day, the dark sacred night
And I think to myself, what a wonderful world...

The Louis Armstrong classic “What A Wonderful World” was the song with which Eva Cassidy closed the set in her final public performance, on September 17, 1996, in front of an audience of friends, fans and family. Eleven years later that unforgettable performance was spliced together with new vocals by Katie Melua and released as a single, which debuted at #1 on the UK Singles chart on December 16, 2007. All profits from the single went to the British Red Cross.

A wonderful tribute to both Eva Cassidy and Louis Armstrong, and a magnificent paean to life, love and joy … (thanks: Vanja)

Islam and the West: lines of demarcation

Some twenty days ago, in a post about the Crusades, I recalled the black legend according to which the Crusades were “Holy Wars” (and as such, by consequence, the antecedents of every religious and ideological wars), and the Crusaders themselves were ruthless, blood-thirsty fanatics. I also observed how today, in the Western countries, that black legend, imbued with a collective sense of guilt, is being continued in the spirit of political correctness, while in the Muslim world it is being continued by Islamists to breed greater resentment and desire for revenge in the Islamic world against the West, painted as evil, while Islam is “obviously” painted as a victim of Christian aggression. Which of course, according to Al-Qaeda and its affiliates and supporters, “justifies” Islamic terrorism as a “response” and a means of defense.

In the above mentioned post I argued that this is simply historically false. Now I have the opportunity to resume the thread of the discourse, thanks to this essay, focused on what it is about our civilization that causes such resentment (in the Islamic world), and, above all, why we must defend it (our civilization), by the English conservative writer and philosopher Roger Scruton, who is currently a professor at the Institute for the Psychological Sciences in Arlington, Virginia. This essay—first published in the Winter 2008-09 issue of Azure—is a revised version of a lecture given as part of the Program to Protect America’s Freedom at the Ethics and Public Policy Center in Washington, D.C.

Here is how Scruton concludes his essay (but a thorough reading of the entire piece is highly recommended):

[H]ow should we defend the West from Islamist terrorism? I shall suggest a brief answer to that question. First, we should be clear about what it is that we are and are not defending. We are not defending, for example, our wealth or our territory; these things are not at stake. Rather, we are defending our political and cultural inheritance, embodied in the seven features which I have singled out here for attention. Second, we should be clear that you cannot overcome resentment by feeling guilty or by conceding fault. Weakness provokes, since it alerts your enemy to the possibility of destroying you. We should therefore be prepared to affirm what we have, and to express our determination to hold on to it. That said, we must recognize that it is not envy but resentment that animates the terrorist. Envy is the desire to possess what the other has; resentment is the desire to destroy it. How do you deal with resentment? This is the great question that so few leaders of mankind have been able to answer. Christians, however, are fortunate in being heirs to the one great attempt to answer it, which was that of Jesus, who drew on a longstanding Jewish tradition that goes back to the Tora, and which was expressed in similar terms by his contemporary R. Hillel. You overcome resentment, Jesus told us, by forgiving it. To reach out in a spirit of forgiveness is not to accuse yourself; it is to make a gift to the other. And it is here, it seems to me, that we have taken a wrong turn in recent decades. The illusion that we are to blame, that we must confess our faults and join our cause to that of our enemies, only exposes us to a more determined hatred. The truth is that we are not to blame; that our enemies’ hatred of us is entirely unjustified; and that their implacable enmity cannot be defused by our breast-beating.

There is a drawback to realizing this truth, however. It makes it seem as though we are powerless. But we are not powerless. There are two resources on which we can call in our defense, one public, and the other private. In the public sphere, we can resolve to protect the good things that we have inherited. That means making no concessions to those who wish us to exchange citizenship for subjection, nationality for religious conformity, secular law for shari’ah, the Judeo-Christian inheritance for Islam, irony for solemnity, self-criticism for dogmatism, representation for submission, and cheerful drinking for censorious abstinence. We should treat with scorn all those who demand these changes and invite them to live where their preferred form of political order is already installed. And we must respond to their violence with whatever force is required to contain it.

In the private sphere, however, Christians should follow the path laid down for them by Jesus: namely, looking soberly and in a spirit of forgiveness on the hurts that we receive, and showing, by our example, that these hurts achieve nothing save to discredit the one who inflicts them. This is the hard part of the task—hard to perform, hard to endorse, and hard to recommend to others. Nonetheless, it is the task at hand, and in a battle the stakes of which are so high, it is a task that we cannot fail to undertake.

Springtime

Sandro Botticelli, Primavera (Allegory of Spring), detail - Uffizi Gallery, Florence

“ The spring over there takes you by the throat, the flowers blooming by the thousands over white walls. If you strolled around for an hour in the hills surrounding my town, you would return with the odor of honey in your clothes. ”

—Albert Camus, The Misunderstanding (Le Malentendu), act 2, sc. 1.

Twitter's the fastest-growing social-networking service

Twitter “is growing really, really, really, really fast,” according to Nielsen. A new survey about the five fastest growing “member community destinations” in the U.S. reveals that Twitter is at the top: from February 2008 to February 2009, it clocked in at a whopping 1,382 percent growth rate …

'Why the GOP Can’t Win With Minorities'

Just a quick post to thank Tom for linking to a very interesting and insightful article by Shelby Steele (and to follow his example). Tom is absolutely right: this piece is worth reading “regardless of your political orientation.” Shelby Steele is an award-winning author, columnist, documentary film maker, and a research fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University. He, as well as Barack Obama, was born to a black father and a white mother, but, unlike the current President of the United States, he is not a liberal. At least not any more.

Let the gratefulness overflow into blessing all around you

You think this is just another day in your life.
It’s not just another day. It’s the one day that is given to you today.
It’s given to you. It’s a gift.

Yet another amazing video (thanks: Emmanuelle). The voice is that of Br. David Steindl Rast, a Benedictine monk who has been regarded as Thomas Merton’s successor in the Christian contemplative tradition, and whose books have been translated into many languages (his most recent book is The Music of Silence: A Sacred Journey through the Hours of the Day).

For decades, Brother David divided his time between periods of hermit’s life and extensive lecture tours on five continents. At present, he serves a worldwide Network for Grateful Living—dedicated to providing education and support for the practice of grateful living as a global ethic— through http://www.gratefulness.org/index.htm.

Here is a transcript of the narrative in the video.

For a better understanding of Obama’s policy on human cloning

There has been considerable discussion over the last week in the media and the blogosphere about President Obama’s decision to reverse George W Bush’s policy of denying federal funding to stem-cell research that requires killing human embryos. Expectedly, Obama has been praised and criticized in equal measure, mostly depending on whether the “judges” were Republicans (especially religious right-wing conservatives) or Democrats (especially left-wing liberals). This is actually perfectly normal. Yet, what was surprising to me was to discover that some harsh critics of Obama criticized him for both right and wrong reasons—I mean, they criticized him both for what is wrong and for what is right with what he did and said, thus exposing themselves, in my view, to the risk of falling into blatant contradiction.

Such is the case, for instance, of this post, which, after some righteous critical remarks, accuses Obama, who also declared in the same occasion that he would never open the door to the “use of cloning for human reproduction”—because, in Obama’s own words, “it is dangerous, profoundly wrong, and has no place in our society, or any society”—of having decided that while scientists may form cellular clones on which to experiment, “citizens may not use the same technology to create a human life.” Which implies that, according to Melissa Clouthier (and Katherine Jean Lopez), the use of cloning for human reproduction is in itself a good thing. In fact, she continues,

[i]f a family loses a child and can create a clone, who is President Barack Obama to impose his morality on that family? There may well be good scientific research that shows human cloning to be “safe” when “responsibly done.”

Interesting observations, and a fairly liberal attitude towards the whole matter …, or am I missing something? And if so, wouldn’t it be better to be a bit more straightforward?

This “might” also seem to be the case of Charles Krauthammer, in a must-read piece on Townhall.com (also here). He besides had long argued, during his five years on the President’s Council on Bioethics, that, “contrary to the Bush policy, federal funding should be extended to research on embryonic stem cell lines derived from discarded embryos in fertility clinics,” as he himself recalls. Which is, to me, an arguable opinion, but not devoid of common sense. But, he continues,

Bush had restricted federal funding for embryonic stem cell research to cells derived from embryos that had already been destroyed (as of his speech of Aug. 9, 2001). While I favor moving that moral line to additionally permit the use of spare fertility clinic embryos, Obama replaced it with no line at all. He pointedly left open the creation of cloned -- and noncloned sperm-and-egg-derived -- human embryos solely for the purpose of dismemberment and use for parts.

Here his criticism is exactly on target:

I am not religious. I do not believe that personhood is conferred upon conception. But I also do not believe that a human embryo is the moral equivalent of a hangnail and deserves no more respect than an appendix. Moreover, given the protean power of embryonic manipulation, the temptation it presents to science, and the well-recorded human propensity for evil even in the pursuit of good, lines must be drawn. I suggested the bright line prohibiting the deliberate creation of human embryos solely for the instrumental purpose of research -- a clear violation of the categorical imperative not to make a human life (even if only a potential human life) a means rather than an end.
On this, Obama has nothing to say. He leaves it entirely to the scientists. This is more than moral abdication. It is acquiescence to the mystique of "science" and its inherent moral benevolence.
How anyone as sophisticated as Obama can believe this within living memory of Mengele and Tuskegee and the fake (and coercive) South Korean stem cell research is hard to fathom.
That part of the ceremony, watched from the safe distance of my office, made me uneasy. The other part -- the ostentatious issuance of a memorandum on "restoring scientific integrity to government decision-making" -- would have made me walk out.
Restoring? The implication, of course, is that while Obama is guided solely by science, Bush was driven by dogma, ideology and politics.
What an outrage. George Bush's nationally televised stem cell speech was the most morally serious address on medical ethics ever given by an American president. It was so scrupulous in presenting the best case for both his view and the contrary view that until the last few minutes, the listener had no idea where Bush would come out.

More than moral abdication … I cannot but agree with Charles Krauthammer. Furthermore, he continues,

Obama's address was morally unserious in the extreme. It was populated, as his didactic discourses always are, with a forest of straw men. Such as his admonition that we must resist the "false choice between sound science and moral values."

But here is what might seem to be a turning point of Krauthammer’s argument:

Yet, exactly 2 minutes and 12 seconds later he went on to declare that he would never open the door to the "use of cloning for human reproduction."

By the way, please note that Obama did not close the door to human cloning, he simply closed the door to “the use” of human cloning for one purpose, but left the door open to “the use” of human cloning for other purposes, as Terence Jeffrey points out in another must-read post.

Well, says Krauthammer,

Does he [President Obama] not think that a cloned human would be of extraordinary scientific interest? And yet he banned it.

Does this mean that Krauthammer thinks that cloning for human reproduction is in itself a good thing? Well, no, actually, even though his formulation is somewhat (unintentionally) ambiguous. He basically wants to point out that Obama is contradicting himself:

Is he so obtuse not to see that he had just made a choice of ethics over science? Yet, unlike President Bush, who painstakingly explained the balance of ethical and scientific goods he was trying to achieve, Obama did not even pretend to make the case why some practices are morally permissible and others not.
This is not just intellectual laziness. It is the moral arrogance of a man who continuously dismisses his critics as ideological while he is guided exclusively by pragmatism (in economics, social policy, foreign policy) and science in medical ethics.
Science has everything to say about what is possible. Science has nothing to say about what is permissible. Obama's pretense that he will "restore science to its rightful place" and make science, not ideology, dispositive in moral debates is yet more rhetorical sleight of hand -- this time to abdicate decision-making and color his own ideological preferences as authentically "scientific."

In other words, it is not that Obama is doing wrong when he bans the use of cloning for human reproduction purposes, but the ban should be far more extensive. Quite a different story.

However, what is now certain is that it’s time for Obama’s pro-life supporters to face the facts: despite superficial and misleading appearances, Obama supports human cloning for embryo-destructive research.


To conclude, for those who might still have doubts, here is what Ian Wilmut, famed for creating Dolly the cloned sheep, had to say about reproductive cloning in an August 2008 interview to Scientific American:

S.A.  Why do you think a ban on reproductive cloning is important?
W.  Quite apart from anything else, I think it would be entirely appropriate to get a ban at the present time because there is a very significant risk of dead babies or of children with severe abnormalities. The list of abnormalities which we've seen in livestock and in mice is very long and quite horrifying if you think of it in terms of children. In one lamb, it panted all of its life, even when it rested, because of restricted blood flow through the lungs. After two weeks we decided that it was kinder to end its life because we could not correct the abnormality. And, of course, it wouldn't be without risk to the woman who was giving birth to the child because there are often difficulties. And so, on those grounds alone, I would have thought that there would be pretty well a unanimous wish to prevent that sort of thing happening.

My own view has not changed at all that there are other reasons why reproductive cloning should be prohibited, which are essentially because of the psychological effects of being a clone. We do tend to anticipate and expect that children will be like their parents. And I think that would be even stronger if the child were a clone. And so that's the reason why I would be concerned about it.

Schismatic Bishops, Holocaust Denial and Christian-Jewish Relations

Fr John McDade SJ, Principal of Heythrop College, University of London, on schismatic bishops, holocaust denial and the Church’s understanding of Christian-Jewish relations (thanks: Anna Arco). Here is how he concludes:

Modern Christians have inherited a version of Christianity in which there has been a negative relationship to Judaism […]. A considerably darker legacy is the hate-filled rhetoric bequeathed to us by John Chrysostom in 4thCentury Antioch, Martin Luther in 16th Century Germany and the countless preachers who stirred up the anti-Jewish feelings that flowed murderously into 20th Century European history. The task is now a simple one: to develop an account of Christian identity in which there is a positive relationship to the Jewish people. And with this project, we are setting ourselves the task of recovering the insight available in the earliest Christian decades that there is a living tie between what God does in Israel and what God does through Christ. This can only be an enrichment of the core Christian identity and mission, and it is this enrichment which is threatened by those who, for ideological reasons, try to drive a wedge between Christians and Jews. We should not tolerate them.

If Richard Williamson is accepted back into communion with the Catholic Church, there should be no question of his exercising either an episcopal or a priestly role in the Church. This would be completely inappropriate and unwelcome: no one needs ministry from a person who holds views which are inimical to the Church’s positive relation to the Jewish people. When Pope Benedict was simply Joseph Ratzinger, he wrote that ‘the highest vocation that we can have is simply to be a Christian’. This ought to govern the advice that is given now to Williamson: live as a Catholic layman and do your best to reach heaven through the grace you received at Baptism, but do not expect to act in the name of Christ in either a priestly or episcopal capacity. This matter is too important for the Church to act otherwise and Williamson is too marginal and offensive to genuine Catholicism to be given a ministry to speak in the name of the Church.