Last month, columnist Ross Douthat wrote several pieces about the synod on the family in Rome.

He suggesting, among other things, that clear factions among the bishops have emerged, that Pope Francis favours a more liberal resolution of the key questions and that heretical viewpoints are afoot in Rome.

Dozens of theologians and academics responded by sending a letter to the editors of the New York Times.

They stated that Douthat was proposing a politicised reading of Church affairs and that he was, at the end of the day, unqualified to speak on such complex matters.

"Moreover, accusing other members of the Catholic Church of heresy, sometimes subtly, sometimes openly, is serious business that can have serious consequences for those so accused. This is not what we expect of the New York Times," the academics wrote.

Douthat responded by agreeing that he is not a theologian.

"But neither is Catholicism supposed to be an esoteric religion, its teachings accessible only to academic adepts," he said.

Douthat said that while he has great respect for the professors' vocation, his own role is to provoke and explain.

He said that in his columns, he aims to cut through obfuscations and get to the basic truth.

He went on to explain his concerns about ideas of "development of doctrine" that appeared to reverse doctrine, and to pastoral suggestions that seem to empty doctrine in practice.

Los Angeles auxiliary Bishop Robert Barron backed Douthat being able to express his views.

"Are all of Ross Douthat's opinions on the synod debatable? Of course," Bishop Barron wrote.

"Do I subscribe to everything he has said in this regard? No. But is he playing outside the rules of legitimate public discourse in such an egregious way that he ought to be censored? Absolutely not!"

"The [academics'] letter to the Times is indicative indeed of a much wider problem in our intellectual culture, namely, the tendency to avoid real argument and to censor what makes us, for whatever reason, uncomfortable," Bishop Barron added.

Sources

• New York Times
• Daily Theology
• New York Times
• Aleteia
• Image: Veritas

What they have found so far has shocked even scholars steeped in the history of the Holocaust.

The researchers have cataloged some 42,500 Nazi ghettos and camps throughout Europe, spanning German-controlled areas from France to Russia and Germany itself, during Hitler's reign of brutality from 1933 to 1945.

The figure is so staggering that even fellow Holocaust scholars had to make sure they had heard it correctly when the lead researchers previewed their findings at an academic forum in late January at the German Historical Institute in Washington.

"The numbers are so much higher than what we originally thought," Hartmut Berghoff, director of the institute, said in an interview after learning of the new data.

"We knew before how horrible life in the camps and ghettos was," he said, "but the numbers are unbelievable."

The documented camps include not only "killing centers" but also thousands of forced labor camps, where prisoners manufactured war supplies; prisoner-of-war camps; sites euphemistically named "care" centers, where pregnant women were forced to have abortions or their babies were killed after birth; and brothels, where women were coerced into having sex with German military personnel.

Auschwitz and a handful of other concentration camps have come to symbolize the Nazi killing machine in the public consciousness. Likewise, the Nazi system for imprisoning Jewish families in hometown ghettos has become associated with a single site — the Warsaw Ghetto, famous for the 1943 uprising. But these sites, infamous though they are, represent only a minuscule fraction of the entire German network, the new research makes painfully clear.

The maps the researchers have created to identify the camps and ghettos turn wide sections of wartime Europe into black clusters of death, torture and slavery — centered in Germany and Poland, but reaching in all directions. Continue reading

Sources

• The New York Times Sunday Review
• Image: etiquette

Few can deny that the movement is on the march. At the time of the election four states moved in favour of same-sex marriage and other states are quickly gathering momentum on the issue. Disturbingly, the thought embedded in Signorile's spiel is that even polite disagreement and opposition to the claims of same-sex marriage advocates amounts to wholesale bigotry and intolerance. Heterosexual marriage supporters vehemently deny this, but many people now think that principled opposition to same-sex marriage is a delusion.

One reason why supporters of traditional marriage are losing elections is that they are losing the war for intellectual credibility. They are too often mired in facile arguments about "tradition", Bible passages, and bleeding heart litanies about children. Supporters of gay marriage have succeeded in ridiculing these fumbling attempts at a rationale as ignorant and homophobic.

So a robust intellectual defence of the traditional view of marriage by a group of authors which includes Princeton law professor Robert P George is a welcome addition to the debate. Labelled by the New York Times as "America's most influential conservative Christian thinker", George, a convert from the ranks of the Democrats, is responsible for the interdenominational manifesto The Manhattan Declaration signed by a number of Christian leaders in support of traditional marriage, sanctity of life and religious liberty. Sherif Girgis is a Ph.D. student in philosophy at Princeton and a J.D. candidate at Yale Law School. Ryan T. Anderson, who is William E. Simon Fellow at the Heritage Foundation and editor of the Witherspoon Institute's journal Public Discourse, is a Phi Beta Kappa and magna cum laude graduate of Princeton University and a Ph.D. candidate in political philosophy at the University of Notre Dame. Altogether a formidable team. Continue reading

Sources

• Shawn Murphy in MercatorNet
• Image: Dave & Charlotte