Prolife common ground with Obama Administration?

This just aired on Thurs night (5/28/2009) and I randomly stumbled upon it on CSPAN (which I don't normally watch at all!)

It's a public exchange of views (not really a debate) at Catholic University of America with the topic: “The Obama Administration and the Sanctity of Human Life: Is There a Common Ground on Life Issues? What is the Right Response by ‘Pro-Life” Citizens?”

It's interesting since one of the presenters is Dr. Doug Kmiec who argued publicly and strongly that faithful Catholics can vote for Obama in the last election and is seen here still generally supportive of Obama and his administration. Both presenters are Catholic lawyers and professors and even though it's not a debate, it's interesting to see both sides articulated so clearly before each other. Take a look, it's only about an hour. And yes, this matters for you still in high school because you SHOULD be voting in the next presidential election in 4 years! And Catholic or not, as residents of the US, we're all under the administration of President Obama.

Catholic University School of Law presentation

[Guest Post] Population vs Environment

(This is a guest post by Rosemary who wrote this short essay for her AP Environmental Sciences class.  Feel free to discuss!)

The problem of population and the environment is a ubiquitous struggle that seems to be unfeasible. This is because the negative effects are in a continuous cycle, in which the population weakens the environment, and at other times the environment causes the increase in population. The question of which subject is more of a priority is solely based on the individual; however any person would agree that both matters are of important interest because they affect us very heavily. Through the environmental forum provided by ASB and the movie Slum Dog Millionaire, I have seen and discussed the contradicting areas with peers of my age.

            In my personal opinion, life should always be the first priority and it should always be protected. After attending the forum, I felt disappointed about our society. At least ten girls said that we, as humans, are so prone to having sex that we should just do it. Are we just animals that don’t have enough self dignity to have power over our physical desires? If we treat having sex as just an itch that we have to scratch, this is what causes the problems of environmental declining and also unfortunate STD’s. If everyone had the right mindset about what it means to have sex, then diseases like AIDS, HIV, and STDs would never have been an epidemic. What does it say about our society that HIV/AIDS is an epidemic? Although it is true that the increase in population is harming the environment, cutting off population, using contraceptives, and increasing abortion is completely illogical and unreasonable. Sebastian Schmieg, who looks at green issues and news stories from the political, business, technological, and social perspectives, writes: “After all, saving the planet is far more important than saving an ‘unwanted’ human child, ... At least, we now know the price of a human life: something that we used to think was priceless.” I completely agree with the satirical Schmieg; when have we started looking the habitat that was created for people, as something more important than people? If we regard the environment as more important than population, we have the sense that it would be better if humanity disappeared altogether or shrank to far more “reasonable” proportions than if we choked our planet in carbon, which would have the same result anyway: humanity’s extinction. But is it better for us to be extinct faster with our green planet still bio-diverse and beautiful, than for us to drag the planet down with us? Sure, population is growing far too rapidly for our planet to hold, but increasing contraceptives is not the solution. A suggestion given at the forum describes a financial incentive that encourages smaller families. I can imagine this simple and strong method to be very successful. In conclusion, I have learned a lot about the environmental issues that an increase of population causes, and I believe the solution to this problem must be treated with integrity and morality, and not with what is more convenient. Let’s stop cleaning up spider-webs and kill the spider.

Genes Explain Everything

John Cleese is an awesome comedic actor and here he parodies those who over-emphasize the role of genes and how they explain human behavior. Funny stuff =).



Personally, I believe genes definitely play a key role, but boiling who we are down to strictly nature or nurture is overly simplistic and denies the dignity of who we are as humans and how God created us. Dr. Francis S. Collins (a key leader in the Human Genome Project), in the context of a study of the link between sexual orientation and identical twins, suggests that, "whatever genes are involved represent predispositions, not predeterminations." Aside from the scientific nature of the study, from a purely experiential level, I feel like that strikes a nice balance between nature vs nurture. We all have God's goodness stamped in the very fabric of our bodies, but at the same time, we all have a tendency toward intrinsic moral evils like lust, anger, malice, etc (read: original sin). Ultimately, as we live out our Catholic faith, it requires collaboration of the individual and God's grace to fully become the person God created us to be.

Spirituality of a Stroke

Jill Bolte Taylor, a brain scientist, observed and studied her own stroke as it was happening. She speaks purely from a scientific (read: secular) point of view and there are some pretty cool insights. The thing that struck me most though was the spiritual nature of the things she felt as she began to lose brain functions one by one. While some might say that this is evidence that spirituality is therefore all just in our heads - ie. we make it up because our brains have the capacity to do so, I say that this is, at the same time, still consistent with the Church's teaching that we, as humans, are both biological AND spiritual. These two aspects of our human experience are intimately connected and Ms. Taylor's breakdown is perhaps an observation peeking into the way that God wired us, showing us the potential of the spiritual depth we are capable of.

Anyways, the video is an interesting watch though it's kinda long (20 minutes). She kinda has this whole new age vibe thing going on.


http://youtube.com/watch?v=UyyjU8fzEYU
http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/jill_bolte_taylor_s_powerful_stroke_of_insight.html