Friday, April 30, 2004
This day in history, curtesy of JWR
1945, as Russian troops approached his Berlin bunker, Adolf Hitler
committed suicide along with his wife of one day, Eva Braun.
Nothing I like more then the smell of dead Nazi.
Seriously though I recently got into a discussion with a friend of mine on human dignity. Essentially, I was arguing that people always have dignity. That is, people have intrinsic value, not dependent on what they do or who they are. They are valuable solely because they are human. He, of course, disputed this point. It seems to me, however, once you abandon hominis dignitas, if I may make up a Latin phrase, even for someone like Adolf, you're throwing out the baby with the bathwater.
Conversations tend to move quickly from "Look how much war there's been in the past hundred years" to "quality of life" and thence to the culture of death. It always amuses me, in a sad sort of way, how, though life's gotten so much better for so many materially speaking, it was the people of the past who valued their childre. I guess that's because they saw children as having intrinsic wealth, so "quality of life" was something that children made, not something that they destroyed. These days, people with every blessing in the world talk about how we need abortion lest womens' lives are ruined. No. Life is better than it's ever been, from a "quality of life" standpoint. The problem is that we're spiritually three years old, on average, and we don't understand one-tenth as well as a fourth-century Christian just how good life is, because we don't have any concept of what life is about.
Life is not about self-fulfillment. If it is, give up. You lost. You're going to die. Pretty shortly. Think about for a second. You're going to die. I'm going to die. Death is the lense that we have to look at life through, becaues that is our end. Don't fret about how innocent children are ruining your life. Love. Pray. Die a good death. Stop pretending secularism and sex offer answers. Do not conform to the world. Do not conform to the culture of Death.
Jn:15:20:
Remember my word that I said to you: The servant is not greater than his master. If they have persecuted me, they will also persecute you. If they have kept my word, they will keep yours also. (DRV)
Make sure the world is persecuting you. It's good for your soul.
Human dignity. We all have it. From fertilization. To death. Intrinsic value, we all have it, same parameters. That's the Catholic teaching, which has been described as hateful, anti-woman, anti-choice, anti-life, bigoted, patriarchial. Sorry. But I think that it is the world that needs to do the rethinking.
committed suicide along with his wife of one day, Eva Braun.
Nothing I like more then the smell of dead Nazi.
Seriously though I recently got into a discussion with a friend of mine on human dignity. Essentially, I was arguing that people always have dignity. That is, people have intrinsic value, not dependent on what they do or who they are. They are valuable solely because they are human. He, of course, disputed this point. It seems to me, however, once you abandon hominis dignitas, if I may make up a Latin phrase, even for someone like Adolf, you're throwing out the baby with the bathwater.
Conversations tend to move quickly from "Look how much war there's been in the past hundred years" to "quality of life" and thence to the culture of death. It always amuses me, in a sad sort of way, how, though life's gotten so much better for so many materially speaking, it was the people of the past who valued their childre. I guess that's because they saw children as having intrinsic wealth, so "quality of life" was something that children made, not something that they destroyed. These days, people with every blessing in the world talk about how we need abortion lest womens' lives are ruined. No. Life is better than it's ever been, from a "quality of life" standpoint. The problem is that we're spiritually three years old, on average, and we don't understand one-tenth as well as a fourth-century Christian just how good life is, because we don't have any concept of what life is about.
Life is not about self-fulfillment. If it is, give up. You lost. You're going to die. Pretty shortly. Think about for a second. You're going to die. I'm going to die. Death is the lense that we have to look at life through, becaues that is our end. Don't fret about how innocent children are ruining your life. Love. Pray. Die a good death. Stop pretending secularism and sex offer answers. Do not conform to the world. Do not conform to the culture of Death.
Jn:15:20:
Remember my word that I said to you: The servant is not greater than his master. If they have persecuted me, they will also persecute you. If they have kept my word, they will keep yours also. (DRV)
Make sure the world is persecuting you. It's good for your soul.
Human dignity. We all have it. From fertilization. To death. Intrinsic value, we all have it, same parameters. That's the Catholic teaching, which has been described as hateful, anti-woman, anti-choice, anti-life, bigoted, patriarchial. Sorry. But I think that it is the world that needs to do the rethinking.
