The topic is a bit local, but for those interested in what I write about when I am not blogging, my latest piece for the Michigan-based Bridge magazine, “Anti-Panhandling Ordinances Should Offend our Moral Conscience,” is available for reading. The title should tip you off concerning the message.
A Note on Latinizations
Today is the Feast of St. Charbel Makhluf, a Maronite monk known for his life of contemplative prayer and Eucharistic Adoration. Were he alive today and inclined to visit certain “Eastern Catholic” or “Byzantine Catholic” websites, he might be surprised to learn that piety toward our Lord in the Blessed Sacrament should not be emulated by Christians of the East, but rather reviled as a “Latinization.” That at least is the fashionable opinion of some Internet loudmouths who stumbled upon Eastern Christianity the day before yesterday and have now anointed themselves adjudicators of the “authentic” when it comes to the theology, spirituality, and liturgy of the Eastern churches in communion with Rome. They’re an obnoxious lot, but it seems their numbers may be on the rise as more and more boutique religious consumers, already bored with the fruits of Summorum Pontificum, seek ever more exotic and mysterious rituals to dabble in before either growing wise to their shallowness or, as has already happened with some notable liturgical fetishists out there, exiting the Catholic Church altogether. A large part of me wants to say, “Good riddance!,” but charity compels me to still hope they’ll recover some sense of what it means to be a Christian once their incense high wears off.
Should First Things Apologize?
A lot of focus has been placed recently on Mark Movesian’s First Things (FT) blog piece on the deplorable situation of Christians in Iraq, “A Line Crossed in the Middle East.” You should go read it; it’s quite good. The article does, however, inadvertently raise the question a friend of mine asked, “What responsibility does FT bear for Iraq?” For those of you too young to remember, during the 1990s and 00s, FT was the main hub for neoconservative Catholicism. The late Fr. John Neuhaus, along with his ideological sentries George Weigel and Michael Novak, beat the war drums leading up to the United States invasion of Iraq in 2003 while trashing those Christians who stood in the way. While FT has undergone some significant internal shakeups since the death of Neuhaus in 2009, the magazine—which at this point is a minor Catholic institution—has never publicly repented of its support for the Iraq War and, by extension, the misery which followed it.
The Malaysia Airlines Tragedy and International Law – Postscript
I promise to return to “regularly scheduled programming” soon, but for reasons which I alluded to in my first post in this series, my free attention has been fixed on the downing of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 (MH17) and the international response to it. My intention with this series was to clarify, in as simple of terms as possible, the primary international legal issues brought up by this tragedy, including what, if anything, will be done to bring the perpetrators to justice. While we are a long ways away from knowing the full story, new details are increasingly suggesting that the Russian state, directly or indirectly, had some involvement in the destruction of a commercial airliner and the deaths of 298 human beings. In this final post I want to touch on a few hypotheticals and address some questions I have been asked in other forums about the legal fallout to this tragedy. At this point I am still inclined to write a great deal in pencil, but I do think there is enough hard “stuff” out there that we can begin thinking seriously about what type of legal response can be expected.
Appeal of the Chaldean Patriarch
Note: Earlier today the Sons of the Most Holy Redeemer (F.S.S.R.) (Transalpine Redemptorists) posted on their blog an urgent appeal of Patriarch Louis Raphael I Sako, Chaldean Catholic Patriarch of Baghdad, concerning the plight of Christians living in and around the Iraqi city of Mosul. On their Facebook page, the F.S.S.R. expressed regret that this letter has not been widely disseminated online. In an effort to bring more attention to it, I am copying the full text below. Please share.
The Malaysia Airlines Tragedy and International Law – Part Three
In this my third and final post (for now) on Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 (MH17) and international law, I will look at assigning civil liability for the crash and which party will ultimately be left footing the bill. This is not an easy matter to unravel and it could take the better part of a decade or more to sort everything out, especially if any of the blame can be assigned to Ukraine or Russia (more on that in a moment). As it stands right now, I am writing under the already well-supported assumption that pro-Russian separatist militants operating in eastern Ukraine were the ones who launched the missile strike that brought down MH17. The unknown which may, or may not, alter the nature of my analysis is if Russian military forces were involved and to what extent.
The Malaysia Airlines Tragedy and International Law – Part Two
In this second, and shorter, entry on the Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 (MH17) tragedy and international law I want to focus on a common misconception which I tried to dispel to some news outlets yesterday, namely that the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO)—or any other global body—has the authority to shut down a country’s airspace. In a forthcoming post I will look to the complicated matter of assigning civil liability for the downing of MH17.
The Malaysia Airlines Tragedy and International Law – Part One
This entry will be a little offbeat from I normally post here. As some of you know, I am a trained lawyer with a background in international aviation law and policy. In fact, I recently co-authored a treatise on the topic for Cambridge University Press. It should probably come as no surprise then that the recent tragedy in eastern Ukraine involving Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 (MH17) has set my mind to pondering some of the international legal issues involved. Unfortunately, when I tried to explain some of those issues to several media outlets yesterday, they weren’t interested. Terrorism, weaponry, and gore were the primary topics of our conversations, and I couldn’t really speak to any of them. Thankfully my appearances on the local NBC affiliate allowed me to discuss briefly some substantive details surrounding the crash, specifically why MH17 opted to fly over a conflict zone and what the commercial fallout might be. For those interested, the following are some of the more compelling legal issues raised by the MH17 tragedy. Very few of them have been reported and some of the reporting has been inaccurate.
I imagine there will be two or three posts coming that will cover these issues. In this one I will focus solely on the commercial airspace issues involved, along with the primary national security interests that may be in play here. I will try to keep this jargon free and nontechnical.
The Principles of the Right
For those interested, my first post over at The Josias, “Have the Principles of the Right Been Discredited? Leo Strauss’s Rome and Ours,” is now up and available for your perusal. If you haven’t already, be sure to follow The Josias on Facebook and on Twitter: @Josias_Rex
Capitalist Distractions
This should be unnecessary, but alas it is not. To those who have come across this blog in the last day and are, intentionally or unintentionally, inclined to make a fundamental interpretive error, let me be clear: Rejecting capitalist ideology is not tantamount to accepting communism. Other formulations which clarify that the Catholic critique of capitalism, as embedded in the Church’s social magisterium, is not a call for communal property, command planning, or the elimination of markets if, by “markets,” one means the exchange of goods and services.