Charles Camosy's task is audacious: as a Catholic moral theologian, he thoughtfully engages the work of the controversial and often condemned ethicist Peter Singer.
Are American students making the grade when it comes to ethics?
A new survey from the Josephson Institute of Ethics finds that the proportion of high school students who admit to cheating, lying or stealing dropped in 2012 for the first time in a decade.
Another election year, another crop of posts about why people shouldn't vote. Among churchy bloggers, these often take the form of arguments about suspicion toward state power, questions about where our real citizenship lies, etc.
How should we decide who to vote for? Paul Root Wolpe thinks a candidate's personal ethics should be at the top of the list:
When we care about a candidate’s character, we are really asking, Is this person authentic? Are their positions a true reflection of their inner values, or are they politically expedient? Is a change of opinion on an issue a result of the candidate listening to others, learning and making a principled decision, or is it a response to pressure, polls and popularity? . . . . It is in the American character to care about our leader’s values. We should be proud of that.
I don't exactly disagree, but I don't find this all that helpful, either.
Books
Alone Together
Why We Expect More from Technology and Less from Each Other
By Sherry Turkle
The Borders of Baptism
Identities, Allegiances, and the Church
By Michael Budde
A Watered Garden
Christian Worship and Earth's Ecology
By Benjamin Stewart
War and the American Difference
Theological Reflections on Violence and National Identity
By Stanley Hauerwas
The Christian Art of Dying
Learning from Jesus
By Allen Verhey
Making a Welcome
Christian Life and the Practice of Hospitality
By Maria Poggi Johnson
Dictionary of Scripture and Ethics
By Joel B. Green, Jacqueline E. Lapsley, Rebekah Miles and Allen Verhey
The Betrayal of Charity
The Sins that Sabotage Divine Love
By Matthew Levering
The Devil Wears Nada
Satan Exposed!
By Tripp York
A Key to Balthasar
Hans Urs von Balthasar on Beauty, Goodness, and Truth
Alone Together: Why We Expect More from Technology and Less from Each Other, by Sherry Turkle (Basic Books, 384 pp., $28.95). Amidst the deluge of propaganda, technophilia and idolatry that masquerades as objective assessment of digital culture, Turkle offers us galoshes and a sump pump.
I lived my childhood
against the stained wallpaper of the Vietnam War. My children have lived theirs
against the gnawing realities of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and it's
hard to believe that one of those wars is finally over.
Some of my students wear bracelets bearing the legend "WWJD"—What Would Jesus Do? Sometimes in the midst of a discussion about some hard issue, I ask a student sporting such a bracelet to apply that question to the problem. The replies range from embarrassed silence and empty platitudes to wonderfully astute observations. The astute replies are usually based on the story or stories of Jesus, and exercise what William Spohn calls "the analogical imagination."
Academic theology can have a future only if theologians themselves are interested in it. Why should anybody else read it if theologians are so caught up in experimenting with every philosophical movement and political program that they ignore their own field? If this volume is any indication, theology seems to have rediscovered itself as a tradition with its own resources and issues.
