He discussed the possibility with reporters during his return flight to Rome after his week-long trip to Thailand and Japan.

"The plan exists, but the next pope will do it."

The encyclical is one of many "projects in the drawer" that are "maturing there," waiting until the time is right, he said.

Asked if he believed there could be such a thing as a "just war", Francis said: "The hypothesis of legitimate defense remains always".

Catholic tradition has long held that a nation attacked by an enemy could respond morally to that attack under certain conditions.

These conditions include judgements that the measures taken are proportionate to the damage inflicted and that civilians are not targeted.

At the same time, he noted, in Catholic moral teaching, responding with violence must be "the last resort; the last resort is with weapons."

Before that step is taken, a nation must try "legitimate defense with diplomacy, with mediation," he said.

Francis endorses the continuing development of Catholic moral teaching.

"We are making progress in ethics and I like questioning all these things. It means that humanity is moving forward positively and not only negatively."

Francis went on to praise the United Nations for its peacemaking efforts.

However, he questioned the U.N. Security Council giving a veto power to its permanent members: United States, Russia, China, France and Great Britain.

If "there is a problem with weapons and everyone agrees on resolving the problem" to avoid war, he said "one with veto power can say no and everything stops."

While admitting he is not an expert on the United Nations, Francis said he thought it would be a good idea if all the members were equal.

He also noted existence of "armaments hypocrisy".

This involves "Christian countries, or at least countries with a Christian culture and European countries that speak of peace and live by (selling) weapons".

"This is called hypocrisy," he said.

He then spoke of nuclear weapons.

He said he made his point of view clear about nuclear weapons on Sunday when he visited Nagasaki and Hiroshima.

"I said again that the use of nuclear weapons is immoral; this must go in the Catechism of the Catholic Church".

"And not only the use, but also the possession, because if there is an accident or a crazed government, one's madness can destroy humanity".

"Think about what Einstein said: the fourth World War will be fought with sticks and stones."

Source

• Catholic News Service
• Image: Catholic World Report

Obviously, criminal allegations have to be proven, but apologies and obscure admissions of guilt show that the flames are spreading far and wide.

After Weinstein, other Hollywood figures, including Oscar winner Kevin Spacey, have been denounced for sexual harassment. And now the UK's Defence Minister has resigned after allegations of inappropriate behaviour surfaced.

We can expect more, much more, so we need to think about how to respond effectively to the maelstrom of sexual abuse. I suggest a three-stage therapy process.

The first is to acknowledge that the Sexual Revolution which began five decades ago in 1968 has been a disaster. It takes about 50 years for revolutions to fall apart.

The Russian Revolution of 1917 had run out of steam by the mid-60s. After 50 years, our Sexual Revolution is starting to disintegrate; free love has become sleazy sexual abuse.

They scoffed when Harvey Weinstein half-defended his appalling actions by saying that he grew up in the 70s. But perhaps Weinstein was right, in a way.

He may never have had a chance to learn how to behave properly with women.

The 70s was a decade of mass disruption of mutual respect between the sexes. In many environments, it was a free-for-all.

Married women had been using contraceptives since the early 60s, and their daughters thought that if it was good enough for mum, it was good enough for them.

Right and wrong disappeared. Hooking up, adultery and homosexual acts were acceptable if they were consensual.

Some feminists helped the cause by trying to outdo men in raunchiness. Some of them are still defending pornography. If you were a man or a boy, the expectation was that you would bed as many females as you could.

If you were a woman or girl, you were expected to get involved or at least not complain about it, regardless of the man's further intentions with respect to your life and well-being or any children you might conceive. Continue reading

• Martin Fitzgerald is a teacher at Redfield College, in Sydney.

This year, the theme is morality. Lucky me! My guess is that disquisitions on doctrine or Church history or pastoral practice wouldn't raise too many hackles, but ethics is practically guaranteed to rile people up, especially now when issues of same-sex marriage, transgenderism, and assisted suicide are so present to the public consciousness.

I am not sure whether I'm delighting or disappointing my audiences, but I am not ordering my talks to address these hot-button questions. Indeed, it is my conviction that a good deal of mischief and confusion is caused precisely by characterizing Catholic morality primarily as a matrix for adjudicating such matters.

A purely rational or deductive approach to controversial ethical choices is largely an exercise in missing the point. For to know how to behave as a Christian is a function of knowing, first, who we are as Christians. Understanding how to act is, if I can pun a little, a function of understanding what play we are in.

The great Biblical scholar, N.T. Wright, has said that most of us are like actors who are dressed up for Hamlet, who have memorized all of the right lines from Hamlet, and who thoroughly grasp the thematics of Hamlet. The only problem is that we are in Romeo and Juliet.

Therefore, what I am sharing with the good teachers of the L.A. Archdiocese is largely Christian anthropology, a fancy way of saying the articulation of what play we're in and what role we've been given in that production. Continue reading

• Bishop Robert Barron is the founder of Word on Fire Catholic Ministries and Auxiliary Bishop of the Archdiocese of Los Angeles.

The class immediately erupted with commentary.

It was obvious, they said, that loyalty was paramount—not a single student said they'd "snitch."

They were unequivocally unconcerned about who was harmed in this hypothetical scenario. This troubled me.

This discussion was part of an introduction to an essay assignment about whether Americans should pay more for ethically produced food.

We continued discussing other dilemmas, and the kids were more engaged that they'd been in weeks, grappling with big questions about values, character, and right versus wrong as I attempted to expand their thinking about who and what is affected—and why it matters—by their caloric choices.

I was satisfied that students were clearly thinking about tough issues, but unsettled by their lack of experience considering their own values.

"Do you think you should discuss morality and ethics more often in school?" I asked the class.

The vast majority of heads nodded in agreement. Engaging in this type of discourse, it seemed, was a mostly foreign concept for the kids.

Widespread adoption of the Common Core standards—despite resistance by some states—arguably continues the legacy of the No Child Left Behind Act.

The 2002 law charged all public schools to achieve 100 percent proficiency in reading and math by 2014, meaning that all students were expected to be on grade level.

This unrealistic target forced schools to track and measure the academic achievement of all students, a goal lauded by most, but one that ultimately elevated standardized testing and severely narrowed curricula.

Quantifying academic gains remains at the forefront of school-improvement efforts to the detriment of other worthwhile purposes of schooling. Continue reading

• Paul Barnwell is a teacher, writer, and urban gardener based in Louisville, KY.

But critics say such compulsion is contrary to moral advice given by a pontifical academy.

The Church has moral difficulties with certain vaccines, the cell lines for which were originally derived from the cells of aborted foetuses several decades ago.

The moral situation of use of such vaccines was covered by the Pontifical Academy for Life in a 2005 response.

The response stated that parents could be justified in allowing use of such vaccines if there was no other way to protect their children from serious disease.

However, the Vatican document said that parents who chose vaccination would have a moral duty "to make a conscientious objection with regard to those which have moral problems".

Continue reading

You often catch them looking after other people and as they do so their laugh is musical and their manner is infused with gratitude. They are not thinking about what wonderful work they are doing. They are not thinking about themselves at all.

When I meet such a person it brightens my whole day. But I confess I often have a sadder thought: It occurs to me that I've achieved a decent level of career success, but I have not achieved that. I have not achieved that generosity of spirit, or that depth of character.

A few years ago I realized that I wanted to be a bit more like those people. I realized that if I wanted to do that I was going to have to work harder to save my own soul.

I was going to have to have the sort of moral adventures that produce that kind of goodness. I was going to have to be better at balancing my life.

It occurred to me that there were two sets of virtues, the résumé virtues and the eulogy virtues. The résumé virtues are the skills you bring to the marketplace. The eulogy virtues are the ones that are talked about at your funeral — whether you were kind, brave, honest or faithful. Were you capable of deep love?

We all know that the eulogy virtues are more important than the résumé ones.

But our culture and our educational systems spend more time teaching the skills and strategies you need for career success than the qualities you need to radiate that sort of inner light.

Many of us are clearer on how to build an external career than on how to build inner character. Continue reading

• David Brooks in The New York Times

David Brooks is an Op-Ed columnist and the author, most recently, of "The Road to Character," from which this essay is adapted.

Instead, they accused her of being a bigot and a homophobe, called her intolerant, and changed the topic to something less intellectually taxing.

My friend's experience is practically a cliché. Americans who offer traditional viewpoints on moral issues in the public square have become accustomed to calumny. They know that reasoned arguments will rarely receive reasoned refutation.

In California, Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone has become the victim of a well-funded smear campaign because he expects that Catholic teachers shouldn't publicly undermine Catholic beliefs.

Last month, a philosophy professor was suspended from a Catholic university for criticizing heterodox instruction. Even non-believers suffer this fate. Fashion house Dolce and Gabbana is being boycotted because its owners believe that children deserve mothers and fathers.

In the cultural conversation about moral issues, reasoned arguments seem increasingly drowned out by personal attacks. And twenty years ago today, Pope St. John Paul II predicted this would happen.

Today marks the twentieth anniversary of John Paul's Evangelium Vitae, his encyclical on the mission of the Gospel of Life. Evangelium Vitae is probably the most comprehensive and compelling encyclical on moral issues I have ever read.

It addresses the evils of abortion, contraception, and euthanasia. But the encyclical is fundamentally concerned with the relationships between love, truth, freedom, and justice. Twenty years after its promulgation, we must return to Evangelium Vitae. Its message becomes more relevant each year. Continue reading

• Bishop James Conley in Public Discourse

James Conley is the Catholic Bishop of the Diocese of Lincoln, Nebraska.

Psychology studies have shown people are nicer to each other when they think someone is watching, —especially if they believe that someone has the power to punish them for transgressions even after they're dead.

Joseph Watts, a doctoral student in cultural evolution at the University of Auckland in New Zealand has carried out a study of 96 societies in the Pacific.

He says a central message of this research is that humans are capable of building and sustaining large cooperative societies without the threat of punishment by a big god.

"Instead, it seems that lots of little gods and spirits - anthropomorphic beings such as the spirits of deceased ancestors - were enough to facilitate the evolution of complex societies and the role of ‘Big Gods' may have been over-hyped," says Watts.

Watt and his team analysed data about religion and political complexity from Austronesia, a group of related cultures indigenous to islands throughout Southeast Asia and the South Pacific.

They collected the earliest known ethnographic data about the 96 cultures, ranging from islands in the Philippines and Indonesia to Easter Island.

Out of 96 cultures studied, Watts's team identified only six with big gods, and the family trees suggested that these beliefs were more likely to arise after societies became politically complex.

Source

• sciencemag.org
• Scoop

Preaching at an evensong service in New York in January, Archbishop Welby said Jesus' life "challenges every assumption" about society.

"He does not permit us to accept a society in which the weak are excluded - whether because of race, wealth, gender, ability, or sexuality.

"Nor did he permit us and does he permit us to turn religion into morality.

"The old sermons that we have heard so often in England, which I grew up with, which if you boiled them down all they effectively said was: ‘Wouldn't the world be a nicer place if we were all a bit nicer?'

"That is the kind of moral claptrap that Jesus does not permit us to accept."

He told the congregation "we are to get involved, we are to get our hands dirty".

But too often churches had just "circled the wagons in order to keep the enemy out".

Archbishop Welby also cautioned against Christians making the "mistake of identification with the world as all there is".

This is "a mistake we often make today in the way we speak and live".

Speaking about deprivation and inequality, he detailed his experiences in Liverpool, where he served as Dean of the Anglican cathedral for four years, insisting it was imperative for churches to be involved in their communities.

Archbishop Welby added that Christians are to be "caught up in a revolution of expectation and of implementation".

"Were it not for the fact that [Jesus] is in title Prince of Peace, and lived out his mission in service and foot-washing, ending it in crucifixion and resurrection, this would be a call to violent revolution; but even that option is removed from our hands by the way in which he lived his life and calling."

The Archbishop was visiting New York to speak at the "'Creating the Common Good" conference organised by the Trinity Institute.

Sources

• The Telegraph
• Christian Today
• Lambeth Palace
• Image: The Guardian

The Golden Rule, or doing as you would be done by, is such a code.

But the fact that men can arrive at the Golden Rule without religion does not mean that man can arrive at the Christian moral code without religion.

Christianity requires much more, and above all does not expect to see charity returned.

To love thy neighbour as thyself is a far greater and more complicated obligation, requiring a positive effort to seek the good of others, often in secret, sometimes at great cost and always without reward.

Its most powerful expression is summed up in the words, "Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends."

It is striking that in his dismissal of a need for absolute theistic morality, my late brother Christopher states that "the order to 'love thy neighbour as thyself' is too extreme and too strenuous to be obeyed."

Humans, he says, "are not so constituted as to care for others as much as themselves."

This is demonstrably untrue, and can be shown to be untrue, first through the unshakeable devotion of mothers to their children; through thousands of examples of doctors and nurses risking (and undergoing) infection and death in the course of caring for others; in the uncounted cases of husbands caring for sick, incontinent and demented wives (and vice versa) at their lives' end; through the heartrending deeds of courage on the battlefield, of men actually laying down their lives for others.

We all know these things happen. Continue reading

• Peter Hitchens in ABC Religion & Ethics

Peter Hitchens is a columnist and reporter for the Mail on Sunday.

She looked at the man next to her in bed.

He resembled her husband, with the same coppery beard and freckles dusted across his shoulders. But this man was definitely not her husband.

Panicked, she packed a small bag and headed to her psychiatrist's office. On the bus, there was a man she had been encountering with increasing frequency over the past several weeks.

The man was clever, he was a spy. He always appeared in a different form: one day as a little girl in a sundress, another time as a bike courier who smirked at her knowingly.

She explained these bizarre developments to her doctor, who was quickly becoming one of the last voices in this world she could trust.

But as he spoke, her stomach sank with a dreaded realisation: this man, too, was an impostor.

Kate has Capgras syndrome, the unshakeable belief that someone - often a loved one, sometimes oneself - has been replaced with an exact replica. She also has Fregoli syndrome, the delusion that the same person is taking on a variety of shapes, like an actor donning an expert disguise.

Capgras and Fregoli delusions offer hints about an extraordinary cognitive mechanism active in the healthy mind, a mechanism so exquisitely tuned that we are hardly ever aware of it.

This mechanism ascribes to each person a unique identity, and then meticulously tracks and updates it.

This mechanism is crucial to virtually every human interaction, from navigating a party to navigating a marriage. Without it, we quickly fall apart.

A classic philosophical thought experiment poses the following paradox. Imagine a ship, let's call it the Nina, whose planks are replaced, one by one, as they age. Eventually every original part is changed, resulting in a boat made of entirely new materials.

Our intuition that this is the same ship becomes problematic when the builders reassemble all the Nina's original parts into a second ship. The Nina's identity is tied up inextricably with her physicality. Continue reading

Source and Image

• Aeon

Earlier this year, Sr Cristina achieved worldwide fame when she won Italy's version of The Voice.

Sister Cristina, 26, says her version of Madonna's pop song is a "testimony of God's capacity to turn all things into something new" as well as her personal calling to be a nun.

In Sr Cristina's video of the song, there are none of the raunchy moves Madonna included in the original version.

Sr Cristina said: "I wanted to transmit calmness and poetry. I really think we succeeded."

When Madonna's version was first released 30 years ago, some called for the song to be banned because they believed it — and the original video clip — promoted sexual promiscuity and undermined family values.

Continue reading

A Constitutional Convention has recommended removing the blasphemy provision, following overwhelming support for this in submissions.

But a date for a referendum has yet to be decided.

The Church of Ireland's David Pierpont, Archdeacon of Dublin, told a service that caution should be used when changing the constitution, especially on issues of morality.

The Archdeacon said the law, although essential for the conduct of human affairs, has a "limited place in them".

Law is there to protect the weak and at times we all need that protection, he said.

Continue reading

The operators of European-based Victoria Milan claims it has 15,000 Kiwi members and 1020 registered as being from Northland.

The founder, Norwegian Sigurd Vedal, claimed the cheater's portal did not ruin marriages, but saved them. Continue reading

Tolerance is a moral virtue best placed within the moral domain - but unfortunately it is often confounded with prejudice.

Much of the psychological research about tolerance generally and about the development of children's understanding of tolerance of others who are different from them has been examined through research about prejudice - and not through the moral domain.

The assumption made is that absence of prejudice by default means a person is tolerant.

Prejudice and tolerance are actually theoretically different concepts - and not the opposite of each other.

In fact, they coexist in most of us.

Tolerance is difficult to define, which may have led to limiting the study of tolerance in psychology in favour of studying prejudice.

But, unlike prejudice, tolerance can be grounded in the moral domain which offers a positive approach to examining relationships between groups of people who are different from each other.

Based on its Latin origin, tolerance, or toleration as philosophers often refer to it, is most commonly viewed negatively as "putting up with" something we dislike or even hate.

If a person is prepared to "put up with" something - along the lines of, I do not like the colour of your skin but I will still serve you not to lose your custom - that person is someone who does not discriminate but remains intolerant in thoughts and beliefs.

Besides, who wants to be tolerated or be "put up with"?

At the same time tolerance cannot be indiscriminate.

Indiscriminate acceptance in its most extreme form could lead to recognition of questionable practice and human rights violations - for instance, child marriages and neo-Nazi propaganda.

Tolerance as a moral virtue

An alternative way for us to think of tolerance is to place it within the moral domain and recognise that it is what it is, a moral virtue. Continue reading

Sources

• The Conversation
• Image: Revisions

Indeed, it's true that many Catholic universities traditionally ended the conversations on sex and underage drinking with a simple, "just say no!"

And yet, students attending Catholic colleges do not differ from students at other colleges, with sex and drinking nationally starting before college.

Recent surveys suggest the average age Americans start having sex is 17, and the average age of first use of alcohol is 14.

With 95 percent of Americans having sex before marriage, it's safe to say there's a bit of a gap between the official university policies and actual student behavior.

Moving beyond the stereotype, I suspect the traditional Catholic abstinence-only model isn't as black and white as some people may have painted it.

I spoke the other day with a recently graduated R.A. from a Catholic college who told me the way he was trained to handle sexual issues on campus.

"Sex is not allowed at this school between unmarried students," his Resident Director told him in training.

"But if sexual situations occur, including unwanted sexual acts," he said, dropping to a more hushed tone, "there are some off-campus resources for you to give students including counseling and comprehensive health centers that I'll email you."

This workaround mentality, while well-intentioned, doesn't seem that effective for students who may be uneducated about sexual responsibility, alcohol's effect on the sexual experience, and the shame reaction that occurs after sexual assault.

With a recent poll claiming 1 in 5 women experience sexual assault or attempted sexual assault during college, the "sex doesn't happen, but if it does, deal with it off campus" attitude seems to be a major pastoral missed opportunity.

This week's video, however, proves this stereotype is becoming less and less accurate. Continue reading

Sources

• National Catholic Reporter
• Image: The Week

A Herald-DigiPoll survey shows the there is support for this recommendation. Three-quarters believed that high-school pupils needed to be taught more than the mechanics of sex.

The Prime Minister, however, has reservations. He suggested the Government would have to tread carefully because some parents felt expanded sex education would cut across their responsibilities and rights. Continue reading

Last year, we implanted the first bioengineered blood vessel, and it won't be long before we'll be able to print a liver for anyone who needs one.

Because the cost of printing will eventually be cheap enough for us to use the host's tissue, this also means we'll no longer have issues with the body rejecting the organ, since it'll be made from their very own cells.

It's amazing - nearly incomprehensible - as far as scientific developments go.

We're even growing tiny, embryonic brains in the lab: the most complex human organ, and the only reason they're not developing further is because they haven't been able to provide it with a continuous blood supply.

We're hurtling towards a point where we'll be able to artificially create every single part of the human body.

There's only one logical next step from there. Continue reading.

Source: The Wireless

Image: Cross-section of multi-cellular bioprinted human liver tissue, stained with hematoxylin & eosin (H&E) Organovo

The story focuses on Ronald Plishka, who was admitted to MedStar Washington Hospital Center after a heart attack and asked for a priest when — after 24 hours — he became concerned that he might not make it.

Plishka, 63, said he was an altar boy when he was young and now regularly attends Mass at the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception in Washington.

He said he believes in the sacraments and asked for the anointing of the sick, including Communion.

A priest named Fr. Brian Coelho responded to his request, and when they engaged in conversation, Plishka revealed that he is gay. In fact, he had started to talk about Pope Francis and how his "who am I to judge?" attitude toward LGBT people heartened him. Continue reading.

The law stipulates that the child must be terminally ill, incurably suffering and possess complete understanding of what euthanasia means.

Campaigners for "assisted dying" often point out that the majority of people would back an assisted suicide law in the UK. Possibly.

But I wonder, though, where the majority of Brits would stand on Belgium's latest decision.

After all, this latest piece of legislation is not only about the morality of euthanasia per se. It also concerns the ethical, mental and spiritual capacity of children to make life and death decisions.

If a 10-year-old with cancer repeatedly says "Mum, Dad, I want to die" is she mentally and morally equipped to understand what she is consenting to? Continue reading.

Madeleine Teahan is Associate Editor at the Catholic Herald and chairs the Catholic Herald Podcast Debates. Her special interests include euthanasia and assisted suicide.

Source: The Catholic Herald

Image: Generation Benedict