Dilemmas and Connections: Selected Essays

By Charles Taylor, 405 pages, hup.harvard.edu.

McGill philosophy professor Taylor shows how western Christianity became too moralistic and legalistic at the expense of the transcendent dimension. 

He points to the French village priest's strong opposition to Brazilian-like carnival Catholicism, whereby dancing, drinking, and certain other excesses took place on saints days and other Catholic celebrations. In their zeal to take the dancing out of the Catholic holy day, they ended up taking Catholicism out of the village. 

Nineteenth-century Protestants did the same: They shamed young men for their rowdy lifestyles of drinking, gambling, and womanizing, rather than inspiring them with the transcendent view of Christ's resurrection. Men, put off, turned away en masse from the churches. Catholic priests did the same shaming act on young men, and turned the confessional into the most feared or avoided place, with men increasingly shunning it.

The more Christianity moralized in the eighteenth- and nineteenth-centuries, the more it feminized and left little place for men. Rather than preaching and inspiring the fear of God, a most masculine spiritual practice, Christian leaders, Taylor argues convincingly, established "polite" Christianity. To be a Christian was to be a part of polite society, especially in the English version of religion. This was when Christ began to be taken out of Christianity, replaced by "proper behavior."

Readers get a clear sense of how secularism developed out of this. Incensed by the meddling of the parish priest in France, the French eventually went from a strong religious revival in the mid-nineteenth-century to severely restricting the Church in education and the rest of the public arena, something they call laicite, a bedrock of modern French political life to this day.

A second kind of secularism developed, mostly in America and other western countries when people turned the excessive moralism of the churches against the churches themselves. They condemned the crusades and every other real or imagined sin of the church. They portrayed religious people as zealous, violent idiots. Ironically, these secularists followed the churches' habit of restricting the vertical, or transcendent, dimensions, but did so even more eagerly than the churches themselves.

Despite the failings of the churches, Taylor refuses to let atheist moralists off the hook. Hitler, Lenin, Stalin, and countless other utopian tyrants put their ideals into humanity, rather than finding them from a higher revelation. When humans could not measure up to their ideals, these politicians slaughtered millions.

Taylor cautions against the current liberal and conservative tendency in politics to "cultivate" anger. Anger has become a kind of spirituality, whereby the angered, righteous person feels resentment and entitlement. 

Feminism and a host of other ideologies use this to motivate their members. Yet, given the tendency of anger to cause violence, Taylor warns that a return to a higher, transcendent source is more important than ever.

Taylor is optimistic. Secularism has freed the churches to return to their roots, something that he regards as essential. Now that churches have had their hold on the public arena greatly weakened, they can return to cultivating the transcendent within each of its members.

Man in the Field of Responsibility

By Karol Wojtyla (Pope John Paul II), 84 pages, staugustine.net.

Wojtyla argues for adopting a strong sense of right and wrong. He uncompromisingly sets forth the idea that good and evil, knowable to all and determined by God, cannot be altered. Regardless of the ever-changing values of society, some acts are always wrong or always good. Humans must make the right choice.

Man in the Field of Responsibility gives us a sense of the more academic side to the late pontiff, and his role as university professor of ethics at the Catholic University of Lublin, Poland from 1954-78. This short book, actually a preliminary proposal for a longer, collaborative work in the subject, had to be left undone when the author was elected pope in 1978.

The book contains many of the themes John Paul II emphasized repeatedly while leader of the Church. Through the philosophical streams of phenomenology and personalism, he highlights "lived experience" and the need to respect the individual person. This includes a focus on human dignity. A human can never be the means to something, but only the end.

Following Catholic tradition going back to St. Thomas Aquinas and earlier, Wojtyla argues that ethics forms a part of creation itself because it comes from the Father. This natural law is knowable through reason because, written on the human heart, it is part of human nature. All humans are given the gift of the natural law independently of the gift of revelation. Each person can therefore judge certain acts as intrinsically evil - they are evil by their very nature. Likewise, we know that some acts are intrinsically good.

"The natural law assumes," the author notes, "that being and values are in some way connected to one another and mutually dependent." As well, these norms form a hierarchy of sorts, and some norms depend on other norms.

Because this book is only a rough sketch of a proposed much larger work, these arguments are often left without concrete examples, making this discussion largely theoretical.

The moral good, a duty, calls us to do the right thing. The strength of this teaching, in addition to its consistency, is the lack of sentimentalism. While Wojtyla obviously respects the person, his ethics does not allow any space for emotional justification for committing an evil such as abortion.

The conscience plays an important role because of the interplay between the universal aspect of the unchanging natural law and the particular aspect of the individual person, which Wojtyla's personalist philosophy emphasizes. Unfortunately, in this unfinished manuscript the author gives little space to the conscience.

Man in the Field of Responsibility demonstrates the ability of the late pontiff to bring competing viewpoints together. In much of his thinking, he taught how faith and reason can complement rather than limit each other. Bringing natural law and the personal dignity of the individual together into one vision creates a very human, yet non-sentimental moral view of the person.

It is easy to see that in this book Wojtyla maintains such a demanding view of ethics precisely because of his deep respect for the individual. Each person deserves only the highest of ethical values by which to live his life. This is perhaps the greatest theme of this book.

Good Work: Christian Ethics in the Workplace

By Esther D. Reed, 129 pages, baylorpress.com.

While certain strains of Christianity, within both Protestantism and Roman Catholicism, have inspired many of the worst aspects of modern capitalism, Christianity holds the answers to the problems caused by the modern economy. Reed's well-balanced discussion displays none of the anti-Christian rhetoric common to many such works, as she is herself a theologian and writes from within the religion.

She finds hope in Orthodox icons, the writings of John Paul II, Protestant writers, and the Bible. Getting back to the heart of the tradition will reorient Christians so that their economic activity will serve Christ. She does not argue for an immature escapist position whereby Christians should somehow head into the woods and avoid gainful employment.

First, from Orthodox icons she reminds readers of the transformative, transfigurative aspect of Christianity. Through Christ we mysteriously participate in the life of God. This practice can make us less predisposed to participate in today's mindless, ever-growing consumerism. Icons, by giving us a glimpse of heaven, remind us that our work, rather than being about money, worldly success, and acquisitiveness, carries eternal meaning. What we do has a spiritual dimension.

Reed highlights the thoughts of John Paul II that are more critical of capitalism. The late pontiff emphasized the dignity of the human being, and showed how work was a reflection of this dignity. He obliged business owners to respect that dignity by ensuring, for instance, that working conditions were not abusive. Yet he reminded his readers that the Church's task was not to outline a specific economic model. Christians were called to live their lives in the marketplace, and this would transform the economy.

From the Bible, St. Paul's tent-making ministry can inspire Christians. He did not see his trade as a vocation in itself, importantly, but as a way to live his higher vocation. Working Monday to Saturday enabled him to preach Christ on Sunday: "the normality of daily life is taken for granted by Paul and is not elevated by him to the level of a vocation or particular call."

Reed repeats a major theme of her book, which is that many Christians have gotten carried away with equating their work with their vocation. She warns that this can put a spiritual gloss on demeaning or mindless work. While all Christians can have a vocation, and "Vocations are not reserved only for the clergy," not all work is vocation.

Corporations, Reed warns, are turning the work-as-vocation into an excuse to turn us all into workaholics. They promise that through a spiritualized work we can actualize ourselves. Companies spiritualize what is in reality a "fiercely competitive workplace ethic." Importantly, she concludes, "Christian discipleship does not necessarily place a theological or spiritual obligation on believers to seek their vocation in the workplace." Christians can relax, and stop forcing themselves to be super achievers.

Though Christianity got us into this workaholic mess by claiming that work was vocation, by challenging many assumptions and reading the biblical and patristic sources closely, and listening to the wisdom of John Paul II's encyclicals Laboren Exercens and Sollicitudo Rei Socialis, we can begin to define better our real Christian vocations and put our paid work into perspective.

A timely book for our workaholic society.

Sex Au Naturel: What It Is and Why It's Good For Your Marriage

By Patrick Coffin, 134 pages, Emmaus Road.

A small book that packs a lot of punch, Sex Au Naturel counters secularism's lies about sexuality, procreation, and family through clear arguments and strong philosophy. Coffin's method shows that secularism's way of arguing, with its dollar-sense and false notion of rights, needs to go the way of the dodo because of its profoundly evil, culture of death orientation.

By separating sex from babies, society has dehumanized us all. Children are no longer seen as gifts, but as nuisances. Then, when they are desperately wanted, prospective parents claim them as "rights", demanding reproductive technology services. Coffin makes the point that the abortion and IVF (in vitro fertilization) industries are tightly connected.

They are also linked by the same mindset: Whether a child is seen as a nuisance to be contracepted or aborted out of existence, or fabricated into life by a lab tech (with the attendant tossing away of the less-than-desirable fertilized ova), the person is dehumanized. The lab, the government and its regulations, the parent or parents (which include all manner of male-female, single-couple combinations) regard the clump of cells as if it is a product.

Coffin shows with his excellent Catholic reasoning that it all begins from the acceptance of contraception. This leads to abortion, and thence to reproductive technologies, which enable designer babies.

The commodification of babies, and therefore of all of us.

The Church has been crystal clear throughout its history, despite the claims by dissenting post-Vatican II theologians. The encyclical Casti Connubi, released in 1930, was Pope Pius XI's response to the Anglican Church's acceptance of contraception, and used much tougher language than the non-combative Humanae Vitae. The popes and Vatican II have been remarkably consistent on this teaching.

Coffin puts things into perspective. Humanae Vitae came out at the most raucous point of the de-civilizing work of the 1960s, with the sexual revolution and feminism in full swing.

The author offers his own experience at a Canadian Catholic university, where the nice professors, not out to destroy anyone's faith deliberately, were nonetheless dissenting theologians. In fact, some of the speakers invited to the Catholic campus, a who's who of theological rebels, were on the way out of Christianity altogether, having long ago jettisoned their Catholic beliefs.

Again, as any good Catholic theologian, Coffin turns to natural law. He notes that moral theology's main argument against abortion and contraception has long relied on the natural law. Humanae Vitae used this line of reasoning extensively.

Coffin offers a clear and much-needed definition of the natural law. It is human participation in divine wisdom, accessible to all humans and not only through the Bible or the Church. All humans everywhere have this law of good and bad written on their hearts. The 10 Commandments, aside from the enjoinder to keep the Sabbath, are a recapitulation of the natural law.

By rejecting this law, modern secular society has turned its back on historic Church teaching and has created the culture of death. Sex without procreation is a cornerstone of this society.

Thrift: Rebirth of a Forgotten Virtue

By Theodore Roosevelt Malloch, 238 pages, Encounter Books.

Thrift's author, T.R. Malloch, believes in capitalism, but it is the capitalism of Calvin, Scottish Presbyterians, and even the ancient Greeks and their "middle way." Thrift is at the heart of this. More than a virtue, thrift is a spiritual way of living, which rejects mindless consumerism and believes in hard work, saving, and preparing the next generation for gainful employment.

Thrift is the ability not only to budget wisely, but also to discipline oneself over purchasing, work, and family. Duty and obligation play a greater role than rights and entitlement. In fact, Malloch sees our entitlement, me-first victim culture as destructive of social capital, which is essential for capitalism.

Virtues such as thrift build up spiritual capital, which in turn helps promote social capital. Social capital strengthens capitalism by establishing self-reliance, trust in each other and in social institutions, and financial credit. Social capital builds the network of trust relationships that enable capitalism to function. We trust the government that paper money is worth something; we believe that the banks will not fail; and we hope that the system itself is dependable and will serve us us when we are vulnerable, such as in retirement.

Malloch gives the excellent example of social capital being the education of the young generation by the older one. He cites a young entrepreneur who owns several pizza restaurants and plans to retire in only a few years. The man learned the business in his father's restaurant - not through an expensive business degree but by doing. His implicit, hands-on knowledge far outweighs expert knowledge.

Social capital comes from spiritual capital, which Malloch defines: "[T]he concept of spiritual capital posits that the sources of prosperity are knowable and that prosperity can be spread by knowledge and education... The idea of spiritual capital is deeply rooted in natural law and the theological study of God's action in the world."

Wealth creation and the economy as a whole have a spiritual dimension. Malloch goes so far as to say that religion has had much to do with the establishment of capitalism. Nowadays, with instant gratification, entitlement/victim mentalities, and hyper-individualism, the spiritual capital underlying capitalism is not functioning properly.

While Thrift is often quite Calvinist in its tone and outlook, Malloch's firm belief in the creative potential of humans and in how capitalism encourages this echoes some writings on work and justice by John Paul II, including his encyclical Centesimus Annus, where the late pontiff highlighted the creative aspect of work.

Malloch himself echoes the Catholic Church's concern to protect the family from individualism and social fragmentation: "The disregard for law and contempt for authority have sprung from the trend to more selfishness. But the long-term impact is greatest on the essential building block of society – the family."

Malloch puts so much emphasis on the forgotten virtue, thrift, because without it not only are we selfishly rejecting our families for our own needs, but gradually, as social and spiritual capital thin out, we won't be able to meet those individual, consumerist needs either. He suggests that we need to live virtuous, responsible lives, where we work hard and save for a rainy day, and where grassroots organizations rather than the government look after many of our basic needs.

The Future of Marriage

By David Blankenhorn, Encounter Books.com, 325 pages.

"What children need most are mothers and fathers. Not caregivers. Not parent-like adults. Not even 'parents.' What a child wants and needs more than anything else are the mother and father who together made the child, who love the child, and who love each other," writes Blankenhorn in a typically forceful passage from The Future of Marriage.

Taking a traditional and scientific approach to marriage, Blankenhorn doesn't believe that sentimental love is the highest ideal of marriage. Children are the heart of marriage the world-over. Even the reality of infertile couples, elderly marriages, and the like, does not void this, because procreation and the needs of children are so overwhelmingly important.

Marriage forms the heart of the family, which forms the heart of society and civilization. Marriage is not simply a private contract between 2 individuals.

With much social science research backing him up, Blankenhorn shows clearly that marriage is a social institution whose purpose is to guide the relationship of husband and wife. The couple themselves do not have the right to define for themselves what marriage is.

Marriage precedes the couple. The social meaning of this relationship, which above all else includes the duty to rear children and build families, is more important than the sentimental, emotional winds of husband or wife. Marriage molds the couple; the pair cannot alter the idea of marriage to suit their whims.

Blankenhorn argues forcefully from the historical evidence, pointing out that a monogamous notion of marriage with responsible fatherhood replaced temple prostitution and a sexually-free fatherless society in ancient Mesopotamia. The rulers of the land gradually set up the conditions for public, institutional marriage, which included the father's duty to take care of the offspring. This new concept of marriage, "social fatherhood," and stable families built the civilization of Mesopotamia.

Unlike many marriage theorists today, who are guided more by ideology and hatred of the old order than by common sense or scientific studies, Blankenhorn often emphasizes the desperate need of children for mother and father:

"As children, we are smiled into smiling and loved into loving... Helping an infant grow over the years into a flourishing human being is the most difficult, time-consuming, and important work of our species." This requires the balanced complementarity of father and mother, Blenkenhorn notes repeatedly.

He warns that only through marriage can humans cease the almost-never-ending battle of the sexes. The main sexual divide for humans, he writes, is not straight-gay, but male-female. Marriage heals that deep divide through love, sexuality, and family-building.

Because of the deep emotional, financial, cultural, and social needs that marriage answers, the social institution of marriage predates any one religion. It existed before Christianity. The Church put its stamp on marriage, as with St. Augustine's discussion of its sacramental nature, but marriage as a social institution developed along with civilization itself.

Blankenhorn's social, economic, theological, and psychological message about marriage is coherent and easy to understand. While he discusses many current hot-button issues, his wider argument is based on more timeless principles.

Neither Beast Nor God: The Dignity of the Human Person

By Gilbert Meilaender, 118 pages, Encounter Books.

Humans are "strange, in-between sort of creatures," Mailaender argues, and this gives us our unique dignity. We are lower than God yet higher than animals. This leads to creative and ethical tension. Anytime we make ourselves into God, we take on ethical questions and power that overwhelm us.

Our relationship to death is of paramount importance, since death is the ultimate “No!” to our claims to divinity. We do not live forever. Death gives a finality to life, and a commonality to all humans. When we fail to acknowledge this defining aspect of the human condition, we begin to think we are gods. We try to master life and creation, and become like god ourselves.

Only God can choose when we live and die, yet we try to deny our Creator this power. We want to live forever. One of the major thrusts of contemporary medical science is the attempt to relentlessly push our death into the future. Mailaender reminds us of the importance of death: "Our ability to remain interested and engaged in life depends upon our knowledge that it will end."

In other words, our attempts to play god actually make us less than human, as we lose sight of the importance of our moral decisions and the sacredness and urgency of life. Mailaender explains well how this hurts our dignity. He warns that we must stop seeing death as evil, and start seeing it as a part of life – as a part of divinely-ordained life.

Neither Beast Nor God thus adds to the chorus of voices opposing the Culture of Death. We have been enraptured with the power of science and technology for so long that we have lost the sense of enchantment that should come automatically to us as humans. Life should be enchanting, but when we ask too much, it becomes empty.

The God-given life-cycle is itself a spiritual journey, Mailaender makes clear. The various stages of life, including childhood, are good in and of themselves, and we should have no agenda for each stage. Children should be allowed to grow at a healthy pace, rather than pushed into every sort of activity and schooling that will ensure a big career. We also need to respect the aging process as a significant part of the journey towards God:

"It is aging that keeps us from imagining that everything our hearts desire could be given through more of the same kind of life. And it is aging, wearing down, that enables us to cultivate within ourselves the capacity for self-giving and self-sacrifice that makes place for those who come after us."

Neither Beast Nor God offers a traditionalist view of the individual, community, and religion. Mailaender calls for us to be loyal to friends and family, since only by being responsible for our actions towards those closest to us can we hope to love humanity. Responsibility and loyalty give depth and a sacred sense to our love for humanity. Without these goods, in fact, love of the world is empty and impotent.

Primary Source Readings in Christian Morality

Edited by Thaddeus Ostrowski and Robert Smith, 237 pages, St. Anthony's Messenger Press.

This excellent introduction to Catholic ethics as taught by the magisterium offers the primary writings of popes, academics, and pastors all reflecting on good and evil.

The authors don't shy away from sin, and especially original sin, but instead warn about the depth of this in our individual and social lives. The book takes on social sin and justice issues, even linking justice work to the Eucharist.

In following the Ten Commandments, this book is easy for the novice who wants a good introduction to the general issues. It is also beneficial to well-read Catholics who want engaging writing. Rather than a legalistic view of ethics, the authors in this book try to get at the spirit of relationships as well as of the individual. We must fulfill our responsibilities to others and to see the spiritual rather than outward and legalistic character of our actions. Good and evil have spiritual dimensions to them that go far beyond their immediate effects.

Just as importantly, readers will get a sense of the link between theology and ethics, which was one of the most urgent issues in John Paul II's moral teachings. He wanted moral reflection to be grounded in a person's relationship with Christ rather than coming from abstract ideals divorced from the biblical and Catholic theological tradition. Our actions must reflect our belief in God.

Transforming or Reforming Capitalism: Towards a Theory of Community Economic Development

Edited by John Loxley, 160 pages, Fernwood Publishing.

Loxley and his fellow writers disparage capitalism as too individualistic and hierarchical, and seek ways of rebuilding the communities that capitalism has ravaged. At times, the judgment is rather harsh: "In an alienated society [such as the one created by capitalism], individual needs are limitless, the possession of things becoming an end in itself."

Transforming or Reforming Capitalism looks to more than economic issues, asserting that community is about more than material goods.

Community economic development focuses on empowering people, rather than on getting people rich. The book offers clear ideas rather than fuzzy theory, calling for community building through using local economic goods and services; "neighborhood stability"; environmentally sustainable economic development; skill development in local people; and the reinvestment of profits in local communities.

Because the capitalist marketplace can be quite aggressive towards communities and families, community economic development cannot afford to be neutral. It must take stands on the relevant issues, as in covering gaps in community development left by capitalism.

Transforming or Reforming Capitalism's strong condemnation of capitalism would be reasonable if the writers also condemned extreme feminism and some forms of liberalism for their roles in the break-up of the family and society. The radical left is as guilty as aggressive capitalism in breaking up society, and until the left writes with more critical self-awareness, books such as these end up limiting the good they can do.

Justice in the Balance: Learning from the Prophets

By John L. McLaughlin, 216 pages.

McLaughlin examines select statements from the Old Testament prophets, reminding the reader that these teachings have meaning for us today since God demands the same justice throughout history.

Justice in the Balance starts with the basics. The prophets based their messages on God's covenant with Israel, a relationship that began with God bringing the slaves of Israel out of Egypt. Because God was not a typical God of hierarchy, as many other divinities of the time were, Yahweh was concerned with the poor and the needy. Because God called the Chosen People out of slavery, the covenant was based on an egalitarian society.

The prophets constantly called Israel back to this justice, because without such a society, the Israelites as a people or as individuals could never have a real relationship with God. Before rituals or prayer to God, they had to make things right between themselves and their neighbours, something, McLaughlin notes, we need to do today: "The challenge for us is to translate ideas like the Sabbath Year into our modern situation."

Since each short chapter focuses on a catchphrase of a given prophetic writing, readers can get to know certain prophets quite well for such a short book. Micah lived in a small village, and judged the people of Jerusalem as oppressing the rural folk, something of which the city people were unaware.

Hosea was the first in the Judeo-Christian tradition to use marriage as a metaphor for our relationship with God. He accused Israel of being unfaithful to God, since the people of the North were worshiping the fertility god Baal rather than the true God. Christianity later borrowed this idea of marriage, calling the Church the Bride of Christ.

Catholic Ethics in Today's World / An Introduction to Health Care Ethics

By Jozef D. Zalot and Benedict Guevin, OSB, 275 pages; By Michael R. Panicola and others, 310 pages.

Catholic Ethics in Today's World offers a general overview of the various areas of ethical contention, including sexual, business, medical, and military ethics. The chapter on Catholic social teaching (CST) states that CST is “grounded in practical reality. CST does not arise from speculative theology or from technical theological arguments, but from the reality of people's lives.”

CST and other areas of Church teaching leave a lit of leeway for individual circumstances because there can be no blanket, one-size-fits-all teaching. Nor does the Church engage in micro-management of the issues. Rather, it strives to form proper consciences so that the individual can make the right moral choice in a given situation. For instance, the Church prescribes no specific economic system, but declares that any given system should allow for the flourishing of human talents, and the respect for everyone.

The great ideal is the respect for the dignity of the person, who is made in the image of God. In economics, owners and workers must respect each other. In health care issues, human life and dignity is to be the highest good. Humans can flourish sexually only within the confines of marriage, where each has given their gift of sexuality to the other.

An Introduction to Health Care Ethics offers a solid theological-ethical introduction to the remaining chapters, which examine such topics as stem cell research, abortion, and end-of-life issues. It examines the broad theories of ethics, such as virtue theories, deontological theories, and consequentialist theories. Even the non-specialist reader can understand the straightforward explanations for each of these.

The following chapters on specific applications of these foundations highlight the importance of human dignity, and love for each other. Rather than harshly judgmental, the authors emphasize the extreme emotional and psychological difficulties that surround these ethics. Moral decisions are never made in a vacuum, but are taken by people often under duress, who might have a hard time thinking clearly.

On Conscience

By Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger / Pope Benedict XVI, hardcover 82 pages.

“Morality of conscience and morality of authority, as two opposing models, appear to be locked in a struggle with each other,” writes then-Cardinal Ratzinger, getting to the heart of the matter.

On Conscience, from talks he gave to American bishops, reflects the brilliance of the current pope. His great strength is his integrative, holistic view. His many writings look to different eras and geographic locations, and from theology, philosophy, Greek mythology, and the current cultural situation in developed countries such as Canada.

As with Pope John Paul II, much of Cardinal Ratzinger-Benedict XVI's teachings have addressed the descent of freedom into immoral license in modern societies, where individuals believe they can do whatever they please:

“[T]he identification of conscience with superficial consciousness, the reduction of man to his subjectivity, does not liberate but enslaves. It makes us totally dependent on the prevailing opinions, and debases these with every passing day.”

The decay of modern society into instant gratification sounds too depressing; many people, even Catholics, wish that the magisterium would simply relax and lay off of the moralizing.

But the sharp analysis of Cardinal Ratzinger-Benedict XVI's words help us see the immaturity of this request: “First, conscience is not identical to personal wishes and taste. Second, conscience cannot be reduced to social advantage, to group consensus, or to the demands of political and social power.”

Cardinal Ratzinger skillfully offers the Catholic theological insight behind the true meaning of freedom, and once again parallels John Paul II's writings:

“The love of God, which is concrete in the commandments, is not imposed on us from without ... but has been implanted in us beforehand. The sense for the good has been stamped upon us, as Augustine puts it....The true nature of the Petrine office [the papacy] has become so incomprehensible in the modern age no doubt because we think of authority only in terms that do not allow for bridges between subject and object. Accordingly, everything that does not come from the subject is thought to be externally imposed.”

The author emphasizes a special kind of remembering, which he calls anamnesis. He believes that this reflects the Christian belief of a divine spark within each of us. This spark allows us a special kind of knowing that is similar to remembering. Made in God's image, when we hear the Gospel, we experience a kind of remembering or returning back to our true selves as God made us. Here, in our true selves, we find our true freedom.

Human Embryo Adoption: Biotechnology, Marriage, and the Right to Life

By Rev. Thomas V. Berg and Edward J. Furton, editors, 349 pages.

The various authors take on the difficult task of analyzing the moral implications of women adopting frozen embryos that are not their own and carrying them to term as a way to rescue these embryos from “an absurd fate.”

Since the Vatican has not yet given official guidance, we only have previous writings dealing with related issues such as 1987's Donum Vitae from the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, a document that deals with procreation, but before this current technology was developed.

This is a tough subject, and even a well-read theologian can get discouraged from the following complications:

“Part of the confusion is the effect of separating the procreative from the unitive dimensions of marriage. The whole context of frozen embryos is so divorced from the ordinary, from the understandable, that ordinary moral intuitions are no real guide. Clearly the problem should not have been created in the first place....The context of reproductive technology lacks the sacredness that is a feature of marital love.”

Bioethics Matters: A Guide for Concerned Catholics

By Moira McQueen, 105 pages, $9.95.

This concise, informative book begins at the beginning – by introducing important underlying philosophical and theological currents to modern ethics. This includes utilitarianism, consequentialism, and pragmatism. These are the common ways of thinking in North America now.

When thinking about euthanasia, palliative care, abortion, or suicide, McQueen calls for a Catholic rather than utilitarian approach. When discussing reproductive technologies, McQueen turns to Donum Vitae and the Catholic view of personhood. She avoids starting an argument with philosophers – as this would be neverending - and wisely states that

“Personhood cannot be proved or disproved by philosophical argument; in fact, different jurisdictions have asserted that personhood begins at different times on the human development scale.”

McQueen spends a lot of time examining such tensions between current philosophical-ethical views and that of the Catholic Church.

Marriage: The Dream That Refuses to Die

By Elizabeth Fox-Genovese, 191 pages hardcover, ISI Books.org, $25, ISBN 978-1-933859-62-0.

While the late Fox-Genovese spends most of her time discussing the history of marriage and why it's good for society, she also skillfully uncovers the philosophical roots and spiritual ramifications of the unraveling of marriage as a norm in society.

Fox-Genovese should know, with her career in the feminist, left-wing dominated academic world and a late convert to Catholicism after tiring of feminist hyper-individualism. In Marriage, she opposes the “complacency and self-satisfaction” which she sees at the root of the culture of death.

She does not advocate a simple return to the situation where fathers ruled the roost. She advocates authentic community based on true respect for others. The current context of rights-as-entitlements threatens human relations by reducing them to contractual obligations that individuals can leave at any moment. Such a view reduces the family to an ever-changing collection of individuals using the family for their own good.

No true family community or culture can thus develop, as family groupings are always changing and appearing and disappearing from existence as individuals come and go from these structures. Mirroring Margaret Thatcher's “there is no society,” Fox-Genovese warns that “Our unprecedented privileging of the individual has reduced the ties that bind us to society to a mere fiction – and a contested fiction at that.”

Fox-Genovese uncovers the roots to this problem in the feminist belief that all human relations subordinate women. Feminists therefore “end by attacking all binding ties as obstacles to women's liberation.”

Feminists have enjoyed short-term gains for their constituency in the form of almost non-existent sexual morality and the acceptance of careerism and gross individualism. Religion has also been changed, to where people now make demands of religion rather than the opposite. The churches have failed, for whatever reason, to stem or even try to stem the tide towards unencumbered individualism and the resulting social disintegration.”

More importantly, women's sexual freedom has come at tremendous cost to real relationship, and has benefited only a certain kind of man. First, abortion rights removes children from the concern of men. Second, “the sexual liberation of women has realized men's most predatory sexual fantasies.”

Most importantly, Marriage traces the close but unintentional relationship between the feminist movement and wild west capitalism. Making all human relations contractual, as feminists have aimed to do, plays in to the hands of big business by leading to the “commodification of personal relations.”

Feminism's rejection of community offers large corporations their dream of access to atomized, unconnected individuals who can move anywhere in the world. Unencumbered labor is a great achievement of big business, even if the corporations themselves didn't directly bring this about. This law of unintended consequences actually leads to a dramatic loss in personal power, as people become beholden to corporate behemoths. Previously, the family acted as insurance against the control of big business by offering people a safety net against joblessness and an alternative, more deeply-connected cultural world.

“Throughout the globe,” Fox-Genovese writes, “multinational corporations are drawing people out of traditional families and communities, binding some individuals to the prospects of new possibilities, while condemning their kin to the dustbins of the cities or the dustbowls of the villages.”

She then puts her finger on the new, awesome power of corporations, which have built an almost totalitarian capitalist society, aided by feminism's destruction of marriage and the family: “The greatest – and most awesome – power of the global economy lies in its ability to touch everything. In this respect, it acts as the ultimate solvent of the bonds that shape and guarantee our humanity – our intrinsic worth and dignity as persons.”

In other words, despite all the cultural and social destruction that feminists have done in the name of women's empowerment, feminism has actually lost to the corporations.

Fox-Genovese urges her reader again and again to realize that the family is the best hope humans have and the “last best ground for resistance” against oppression. Feminists, in other words, are dead wrong.

Marriage takes a large overview of the post 60's Kulturkampf, and echoes Pope John Paul II, who believed that communism and savage capitalism were two sides of the same materialist, individualist, culture of death coin. Feminism on the left and unrestrained capitalism on the right are different constellations of the same thinking. Feminists, Fox-Genovese believes, have completely missed this reality.

This excellent book digs into the roots and history of marriage and the troubles we are experiencing now, even as it discusses the unintended consequences of selfishness and an unloving ideology.

Bioethics Matters: A Guide for Concerned Catholics

By Moira McQueen, Novalis, 105 pages, $9.95.

Pope John Paul II accomplished many things as pontiff, but one of the most important for the long-term is clarity, something at which his successor has also been extraordinarily good.

Clarity from the Church has become ever more important. Brisk scientific advances, particularly in the medical field, have constantly added to the moral disarray of the post-sixties everything-goes culture.

Given current levels of moral uncertainty in our society – sometimes even among Catholic teachers and other lay members – McQueen's simple introduction to bioethics, which is the ethics surrounding medical and biological issues, helps to straighten things out.

McQueen, a lawyer and theologian by trade, lectures in Christian Ethics and Sexuality and Marriage at St. Michael's College, University of Toronto. She is also the Executive Director of the Canadian Catholic Bioethics Centre.

McQueen's simplicity parallels that of Pope John Paul II, in that the moral thing to do is often quite simple, though not necessarily easy.

Unlike most books on ethics, this one doesn't bog down in case studies. Nor does Bioethics Matters exhaustively examine every angle on issues. One of the strategies of those undermining a moral view of the universe is to complicate and befuddle every issue with ceaseless “what if” scenarios. This tends to make traditional Christians look like inflexible, out-of-touch meanies and themselves look compassionate and open-minded.

Yet McQueen brings the debates back to earth by reminding us that we can find clear solutions even in fast-paced medical sectors full of moral chaos. Her discussion of in vitro fertilization exemplifies this. She keeps her argument as simple and understandable as possible, echoing throughout the book the view of the Magisterium:

“The Church teaches that this use of technology separates the unitive and procreative aspects of intercourse between husband and wife, and therefore is not allowed. With in vitro fertilization, new life depends on the impersonal acts of scientists and laboratory workers. The Church points out that it is completely against human dignity to bring a human child into the world this way, instead of through a personal, marital act of its own mother and father.”

Echoing Pope John Paul II, Bioethics Matters builds its argument around the dignity of the human. Central to this pontiff's ethics was “personhood.” McQueen uses this to great effect for her discussion of many of the issues.

Again, she takes the simplest, least confrontational route to end confusions about personhood. She preempts a never-ending debate with people who want to muddle the argument: “Personhood cannot be proved or disproved by philosophical argument.”

She reminds the reader that whereas Catholic teaching clearly states that personhood begins at conception, “Other views of personhood have to invent or decide upon other starting points, mainly to accommodate the intent to override any legal status the new life would otherwise acquire by virtue of existence.”

In other words, moral hucksters offering up alternatives to Catholic teaching have to play around with semantics in order to safeguard their legal “rights.” They are using the very existence of innocent lives to do so.

McQueen puts the debate in stark, easy-to-understand terms: “A societal denial about personhood enables us to allow abortion as a choice.”

McQueen also brings up another reason besides deliberate moral confusion for society's ethical rot: “Developments in reproductive technology radically affect people's attitude towards new human life. We are in a position to create life but also to reject it at the embryonic stage if it does not fit our expectations and demands. No longer are we co-operating with God.”

She goes on to discuss the dreadful reality that governments, medical science, medical practitioners, and potential parents regard the embryo as property rather than as a human person. She cites the many problems that result from the fact that it takes many attempts for an embryo to survive in the womb. This means that clinics make several extra embryos that then get destroyed or used in research. Just as problematic, what happens to frozen embryos if the couple divorces, no longer wants children, or are killed in an accident?

Even more important than these issues, Bioethics Matters unearths the big spiritual and ethical failure that got us to this point of moral confusion in the first place: “The use of phrases such as no longer required and spare to describe unwanted embryos shows how easy it is to downplay the fact of the humanity of every embryo, made in God's image.”

McQueen builds her consistent and compelling argument on the theology underlying ethics. The first of the book's four parts offers a theological groundwork, and includes easy-to-understand definitions of important theological practices such as hermeneutics and teleology, and ways of thinking about ethics, such as relativism, consequentialism, and deontology.

As well, McQueen's Catholic notions of the importance of the individual's personhood and the integration of body and soul ground her argument.