AGAINST THE GRAIN HAS MOVED!
Our new address is http://christopherblosser.blogspot.com.
It would be greatly appreciated if you could update your bookmarks and links and kindly inform your readers (the content of this old blog has been moved as well).
Thursday, January 29, 2009

A Brief Response to Mark Shea

Mark Shea hails my recent post on torture and Obama's executive orders:
After years and years of incredible nuance on behalf of Bush Administration torture policies ("Golly, what *is* torture anyway! It's all so confusing!"), after years of warm and sympathetic hearings for any and all arguments that, however tendentious, explain away the obvious teaching of the Church in a cloud of sophistry, after playing empathetic host all the usual suspect from the Ladies' Gossip Sewing Circle--shazam! ...

Having a day job (imagine that), I was initially going to compose a point-by-point rebuttal to Shea's latest.

Re-reading his rant, however, I won't even dignify it with that.

A sober perusal of my prior posts on the subject will discern the nature of my disagreement with Shea: that any legitimate disagreements with the Bush administration that could be mounted are obfuscated by his tendency to play fast and loose with the facts; imbue dubious motives to his critics, and substitute the virtual equivalent of sheer playground bullying for civil, rational and charitable debate -- which has, over the course of the past three years, alienated a number of erstwhile friends and readers within the Catholic online community who would have otherwise supported him.

For a single-post summary of my dispute with Mark Shea, see: "Rewarding Bad Behavior" Against The Grain June 14, 2007.

Prior relevant posts on the "torture debate"

Labels: ,



From the new blog Against The Grain

About This Blog

Against The Grain is the personal blog of Christopher Blosser - web designer and all around maintenance guy for the original Cardinal Ratzinger Fan Club (Now Pope Benedict XVI).





Pope Benedict XVI Fan Club
Pope John Paul II
Benedict In America
Catholic Church and Liberal Tradition
Henri de Lubac
Hans Urs von Balthasar
Cardinal Avery Dulles

Catholic Just War Tradition
Catholic Friends of Israel
Pope Pius XII
Fr. John Courtney Murray
Tolkien
Walker Percy

Blogroll

Religiously-Oriented

"Secular"

Blogroll Me!

[Powered by Blogger]

Locations of visitors to this page









Ignatius Press - Catholic Books

<< # St. Blog's Parish ? >>