The Ark and The Dove

Cultural Extinction?

News is going around about aerial photography a previously "uncontacted" tribe in Brazil.
Essentially, they are people who still live in huts and carry spears, theoretically because no one has told them to do otherwise. The people live on land that is supposed to be protected from loggers, and the primary motivation of the photographers was to show people what could be lost if loggers destroyed the forests that these people depend upon for survival.
Then, the article becomes problematic:

Stephen Corry, the director of the group - which supports tribal people around the world - said such tribes would "soon be made extinct" if their land was not protected.

Extinct? Extinction seems like language better reserved for species than for a particular group of people engaged in a different culture. It doesn't sound as if he is particularly concerned that individual human lives might be at stake. Rather, he's concerned that a particular tribal life is at stake.
What I also find disturbing is that there seems to be some kind of real life application of Star Trek's Prime Directive going on here, as if we have some kind of responsibility to never interfere with another civilization and is these people are better off never coming into contact with the rest of the world.
For somewhat obvious reasons, a true Christian can never accept that no attempts should ever be made to contact these people at all (their souls alone make a reasonable, measured attempt at contact worthwhile).

It also seems to me a bit snobbish to let them live in ignorance of the rest of us. "No, no, man who lives in a hut and hunts with a spear, you shouldn't have access to our sanitation technology, medical treatments, or food preparation techniques...you wouldn't really like that it at all if we reduced your child mortality rate. You're much better living the way you are, and we'll just fly over head in our great metal birds and take pictures of you dancing about naked and then send those pictures to everyone in the world so they can gawk at you."

Prophecy of Doom

Okay, this has nothing to do with religious issues (well, at least not Catholic religious issues), but I just read that John Tuturo will be returning for the live action Transformers 2. This does not bode well, as his character ruined the first movie experience. He's actually a really good actor, so my complaint is not about the man...the complaint is that Michael Bay apparently thought it was a good idea to let John Tuturo play his secret agent character in homage to Don Knotts, completely dissolving the suspension of disbelief that the special effects artists had made so easy on the giant killer robots. It's a bad thing when you believe more in the computer-generated characters than the ones played by live actors.
Plus, I find it hard to believe that in this day and age, the only military/government response to aliens would be to capture them for research or to fear them as potential security. Tim Burton's Mars Attacks
did a better job of showing a spectrum of modern responses...even if the more "enlightened" responses to the aliens proved completely misplaced once they started disintegrating people.

Satisfaction Guaranteed!

So, what's wrong with in vitro fertilization? If you're pro-life, then a procedure that helps people have babies should be a good thing, right?

Well, other than the fact that in vitro fertilization procedures require the destruction of embryos, IVF also, apparently, breeds a consumer-baby mindset...or, at least it did in this British couple who abandoned their twins when they weren't the preferred gender.

China's Still Got It

Maggie Gallagher's recent column at Townhall reminds us that China's one birth policy is still a very scary thing. It's hard to imagine anything more terrifying for a woman than a literally pro-abortion government. I'm not just using that as a provocative renaming of a pro-choice ideology, either. Perhaps it also reminds us as well why it can be a conversation killer to refer to pro-choice Americans as pro-abortion, even among our pro-life friends. We might reach a day where governments, businesses, co-workers, and family members try to compel women to have abortions against their will, but we aren't quite there yet. Let's just hope that if abortion is ever made a constitutional amendment, someone has the smarts to make compulsory abortions a criminal offense.

To Save the Children, U.N. Should Give up Mandatory Celibacy

via FoxNews...

The U.N. has been accused of widespread pedophilia among its peacekeeping agents.

In its report, Save the Children UK makes three key recommendations: establishing a way for people to report abuse locally, creating an international watchdog agency this year to deal with the problem, and setting up a program to deal with the underlying causes of child abuse.

 

Tom Cargill, Africa program manager at London's Chatham House, said there is no "magic bullet" that can solve the problem quickly.

 

He said the United Nations is beset by a number of bureaucratic and legal problems when it comes to investigating abuses committed by peacekeepers.

 

"The governance of U.N. missions has always been a problem because soldiers from individual states are only beholden to those states," he said.

 

"So it's difficult for the U.N. to pursue charges and difficult for the U.N. to investigate them. Information is sketchy but we know there are tremendous abuses in war zones and in complex emergencies."

Will the media react to the U.N. the same way it reacted to the scandal within our own Church?
Will people argue that the U.N. should allow its agents to give up celibacy, maybe even get married? Will people call for the Secretary General to be extradited to every country where the sexual abuse of minors occurred?

I will grant that the major difference is that Church officials shuffled priests, whereas the article above does not mention the U.N. doing the same. However, the U.N.'s measures don't seem much more effective. My main point, however, is that child abuse is a human problem that infects every institution where adults are given authority over children. It is not a unique problem to the Church, and, as Tom Cargill points out, there is no "magic bullet" that will make the problem disappear.

Students Declare Spring 08 Semester of Silence for Gay Rights

April 25, 2008 was designated as the Day of Silence.
It was a protest...or rather literally, a refrain from protestation...held on campuses across the country to mark the verbal and physical abuse of homosexuals.
Our university prides itself on its students forced commitment to civic engagement, so it came as no surprise when I found class discussion difficult to provoke on April 25th.
I must confess that I am further impressed by my students initiative in extending the Day of Silence far beyond April 25th. My students have remained silent for the last week, no doubt to show their solidarity with suffering homosexuals.
Indeed, their anticipation of the Day of Silence as so great, that they began their silence back in January.
I can only assume that the perpetual silence of my students marks their long-term and deep commitment to advancing homosexual rights on this campus.
It is not enough that every flight of every stairwell has at least two Queer Theory posters...and another one on every other door, including the entrances to the graduate student offices...not too mention countless pink-triangular Safe Space, Safe Person stickers littering the halls!
No, it is not enough that there is a Center for GLBT studies!
It is not enough that we have openly gay directors of various offices and at least one openly gay chaplain!
We must continue to remain silent until this campus is really transformed into a safe community welcoming homosexuals!

In order to make sure that this university really understands the plight of those attracted to the same -sex, I think we need to do more than just remain silent. That is why I declare the Fall Semester of 2008 to be the Semester of Silence No Doing Homework Reading for Gay Rights! Only then will teachers truly realize just how pervasive gay advocacy really is on this campus!