The ethics of punishment

An anonymous commentor on Bishop Alan’s Blog: Mercy seasons justice? asks:
Is justice not about rewards and punishments at all but about ‘making things right’ and restoring relationships? Or is it both? Am I confusing conflicting views on Christian justice or is there a broad consensus? What is your view?
What happened to make punishment, which was [...]

Many pregnant women decline abortion after sermon

One sometimes reads news items about how someone has blown up an abortion clinic, or terminated a doctor with a reputation for carrying out abortions. These things usually (actually, almost always) seem to happen in the USA. And when the perpetrator is caught, he (it is also usually a he) often tries to justify his [...]

Lobbying is theft

A couple of weeks ago I commented about the ethical assumptions that seemed to lie behind a statement I found on another blog, that “universal healthcare is theft”. Now Liz Dyer has drawn my attention to this:
Daily Dose – Lobbyists Spend Millions to Influence Health Care:
Drugmakers, hospitals and insurers continued to pour millions of dollars [...]

Self-evident truths and moral turpitude

“We hold these truths to be self-evident…” so said the framers of the US Declaration of Independence. And some of their fellow countrymen seem even today to hold certain beliefs as self-evident truths.
Here’s one I came across the other day:

Universal healthcare is theft
from A conservative blog for peace
Now it could be argued that such a [...]

Witchcraft, mob justice and hypocrisy

In our teaching week at Atteridgeville last week we were discussing Christian morality and ethics, and the kind of sins one needs to confess in confession. Father Athanasius mentioned the need to confess attempts to harm other people by abusing them physically, verbally or spiritually (for example by witchcraft). And when he mentioned witchcraft there [...]

Anargyri

The Orthodox Church has a category of saints called in Greek anargyri (silverless ones), usually translated into English as “unmercenary physicians”. They were medical doctors who did not charge for their services, and as such they are a living reproach to the ever-expanding cult of healthcare for profit.
As Monte Asbury puts it in his blog [...]

Human sexuality — bridging the gap

My post today is part of a larger initiative of more than 50 bloggers all sharing their thoughts on how to ‘bridge the gap’. You can check out the other links at www.btgproject.blogspot.com.
I’m still wondering why I’m participating in this synchroblog, since I don’t really have anthing coherent to say, but since I have [...]

Born again died again Christians

What are the top five social and ethical issues facing us today? Matt Stone asked this on this blog recently.
One of the things mentioned was torture, and something about that that ought to concern Christians is that in a recent survey in the USA a higher-proportion of churchgoers than non-churchgoers thought that torture was morally [...]

Philosophy and the politics of abortion

One of the things that concerns me is the propensity of some Christians to believe and act on urban legends and this came up in a discussion about eugenics in Fr Gregory Jensen’s blog Koinonia: Eugenics Are Now On the Table.
Fr Gregory referred to an article by Gary Graham, Flashpoint! A Woman’s Right To Choose, [...]

Sexual ethics?

Hat-tip to the Stroppy Rabbit for the link to this chart on religion and sexual ethics, and for providing a pagan view in addition to the original chart, which is said to have appeared in the San Francisco Chronicle in December 1994. It was compiled, according to them, “based on official reports and expert advice.”
It [...]