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Post by assisi on Jun 25, 2021 15:45:04 GMT
US Conservative Catholic commentators have a lot of affection for the death penalty. Somehow, I'd have more respect for their position if they went for traditional methods rather than the lethal injection now preferred. Give me a firing squad or a gallows any day. I'd prefer lethal injection and firing squad. The gallows sometimes don't work that well. And the old electric chair looked a bit of a long drawn out affair (I still have memories of the electric chair scene in the 'Green Mile').
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Post by Alaisdir Ua Séaghdha on Jun 25, 2021 20:56:52 GMT
US Conservative Catholic commentators have a lot of affection for the death penalty. Somehow, I'd have more respect for their position if they went for traditional methods rather than the lethal injection now preferred. Give me a firing squad or a gallows any day. I'd prefer lethal injection and firing squad. The gallows sometimes don't work that well. And the old electric chair looked a bit of a long drawn out affair (I still have memories of the electric chair scene in the 'Green Mile'). Lethal injection can go badly wrong too.
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Post by Askel McThurkill on Oct 8, 2021 16:55:32 GMT
I was looking in the current addition of Position Papers, and there is this book review about Italy. The point it makes is that the north of Italy functions better because there is a higher level of active citizenship and cultural engagement than in the south. This may be due to the largely democratic city states in northern Italy through the Middle Ages as opposed to the south which was governed by the Normans and there was no culture of civic involvement. The analysis falls very much within the Opus Dei philosophy, but the theory is interesting nonetheless.
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Post by hibernicus on Oct 13, 2021 22:52:33 GMT
Not just the Normans - the Byzantines, the Arabs and the Spaniards also come to mind. Some commentators used to claim that the Sicilian Mafia grew out of a culture of macho self-reliance reflecting awareness that you couldn't depend on the state (such phenomena as amoral familialism and the sort of patron-client politics found in many Mediterranean societies would have similar roots) though the consensus now is that it's a distinctively modern phenomenon developing from the vulnerability to extortion of some forms of C19 export-oriented agriculture. It's also worth noting that over the last couple of centuries Italians (mainly Northerners) have produced an extensive literature discussing Southern backwardness, and this could take ugly forms (some C19 writers claimed the Southerners were racially inferior). The Lega party has reinvented itself as an all-Italian protest party nowadays, but it started out as the Lega Nord, demanding independence for the North and complaining that Garibaldi by overthrowing the Kingdom of Naples saddled the Northerners with a piece of Africa.
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Post by Alaisdir Ua Séaghdha on Sept 14, 2022 9:49:29 GMT
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Post by Alaisdir Ua Séaghdha on Sept 23, 2022 15:28:22 GMT
What the Flemish bishops have just done.And this is a good summary of where the Belgian Church is at. As said often enough on this forum, this is the model constantly held up to the Irish Church. And we seem to be following it to the letter.
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Post by Beinidict Ó Niaidh on Sept 27, 2022 16:21:30 GMT
This is another good summary of what the Church has come to: Amsterdam
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Post by Askel McThurkill on Oct 5, 2022 14:18:59 GMT
Belgium features prominently in this thread at present, this is a report on a very long running case concerning a particular act of euthanasia in Belgium. Turns out the European Court of Human Rights find Belgium violated the right to life. God, the country has come a long way since King Baudouin abdicated over abortion in 1990.
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Post by Beinidict Ó Niaidh on Oct 7, 2022 17:04:52 GMT
With The Tablet, predictably, talking up the chances of Arthur Roche in a Conclave, perhaps we should be looking more in the direction of Malta. Here is a a portrait of Cardinal Grech
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Post by Beinidict Ó Niaidh on Oct 7, 2022 17:10:59 GMT
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Post by Alaisdir Ua Séaghdha on Oct 8, 2022 11:36:57 GMT
For all the talk of Pope Francis going to the peripheries, Africa is not his destination of choice with new cardinals.
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Post by Alaisdir Ua Séaghdha on Oct 8, 2022 11:37:42 GMT
Roche is hardly a runner, but Grech is serious. Unfortunately.
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Post by Alaisdir Ua Séaghdha on Oct 11, 2022 15:52:40 GMT
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Post by Alaisdir Ua Séaghdha on Oct 14, 2022 17:01:56 GMT
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Post by Beinidict Ó Niaidh on Oct 21, 2022 19:57:58 GMT
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