Braveheart may have been a great cinematic experience, but it was very bad history and really quite racist and homophobic.

As a Catholic Scot who happily applauded the movie, and someone who stands firmly behind the Church’s teachings on sexuality I have to admit that on reflection the underlying messages behind the film are less than Christian.

Independence may be our goal and while many of us deplore our government’s attempts to equate same sex unions with marriage we are compelled by the gospel to adopt a somewhat more charitable approach than that advocated by a very poorly researched film about one of our great National icons.

Entertaining it was, but I am a little surprised that a Catholic priest should find it inspirational.

Here’s a link that gives Pope Benedict’s vision for youth ministry
http://richleonardi.blogspot.com/2011/08/pope-benedicts-five-keys-to-youth.html

Thnx! Jan-Willem

As I mentioned in the post, social justice is a complicated and often misunderstood part of the Catholic Faith. The contemporary model – exemplified by the USCCB website – is, thankfully, on its way out. That model seeks to encourage Christians to do justice for justice’s own sake. Of course, as Christians, we are not primarily or even secondarily concerned with justice’s sake, we’re concerned with the Lord and the salvation of souls. As such, I can’t say that the causes or principles – which I didn’t take from any website – matter at all. The only cause of injustice in the world is sin. The only principle of justice is Love of Neighbor. All the other ink that has been spilled on the matter comes from an “excessive imminantism” which places undue attention upon this world as the context of Christian Life. As we all know, though, this world is only a stage for the drama of salvation and once each soul makes his or her exit, the stage is only a vague afterthought.

As to your specific disagreement, in the west, slavery is certainly present, but comparatively rare. How many people in the US are really bought and sold into slavery each year? Five thousand? Ten thousand? Even if the number is one hundred thousand, it pales in comparison to the millions murdered by abortion – all of them killed with the protection of the law.

Of course, some people would say that numbers don’t matter, but this is absurd. There are people who die at the hands of serial killers, improperly insulated wiring and amusement park rides every year. The number is comparatively small, but are their deaths less important or their cause not worth fighting? The reality is that the numbers do matter. Sure certain issues stand out, but those issues also rise and fall based on politics and special interest groups… Why is it that homelessness was the Cause Celebre of the 80s, but now it’s never ever mentioned in mainstream media or social justice conferences or even the USCCB website? Acid Rain used to be the environmental cause of choice. Then it was Heat Island Effect. Then it was Global Warming. Now that Warming is being discredited as bad science, we can expect a new environmental cause to pop up.

The reality is that Abortion is the new slavery in that slavery was the fundamental and central moral failure in the west in the previous era. Once slavery was made illegal, the great moral failing was institutionalized racism and sexism. Now, the great moral failure is legalized abortion. These are great moral issues because they are widespread and given the protection of law. Of course slavery will persist, just as racism, sexism, cultural imperialism, wealth-poverty divide, etc will always be with us – although they are now illegal.

The central moral issue of our time is abortion and the simple fact that so many social justice advocates support it speaks volumes not only the fundamental reconsideration of “social justice” as a philosophy and doctrine, but also to the reality that we all have to face: sin is in the world and it’s only conquerer is Christ Jesus.

As I tried to argue, albeit breifly, in the article, “social justice” is a meaningless buzzword which needs to be reunderstood as a function of Christian Charity, not justice. That reorients what we do and why we do it.

Of course, I’d love to dialogue more on the matter.

As a developer I have to write in both Flash and Silverlight. Give me Silverlight any day as the language is actually quite decent and powerful compared to Actionscript which I hate with a passion for being so far behind the times as a full-fledged language.

Though single purpose ereaders are getting the price point where they are fairly attractive – but unfortunately DRM still makes you have to decide based on the company behind the ebook reader. Though I do strip the DRM from all the books I buy so I can read them via iBooks which is still the best tablet based reading app.

Somebody where I work (one of our IT guys) got a Nook Color and he replaced the OS with the GIngerbread version of Android. As a cheap tablet I thought it was fairly cool and things like Angry Birds and video played back fine on the device. Funny to see the Android Kindle App on a Nook though. Not a bad option for someone with not the money on hand for an iPad and geek enough to root the Nook.