An Ecumenical Ministry in the Parish of St Patrick's Catholic Church In San Diego USA

米国サンディエゴの聖パトリックカトリック教会教区におけるエキュメニカル宣教

Friday, May 8, 2015

The GALLI Report ~ Friday, May 08, 2015


The Galli Report newsletter
Friday, May 08, 2015    

The Limits of Happiness
Happiness science assumes that people ought to be and want to be happy. And that happiness is generally good for families, society, and especially the economy. And so happiness science and government sometimes join forces to inflict happiness on unsuspecting people:
The notion of "happiness" has moved from being, as [William Davies] calls it, a pleasant add-on, to a measurement useful in the business of making money—and at the expense of increased control over your life.
So argues Vicky Pryce, chief economic adviser at the Centre for Economics and Business Research in London, in her review of Davies's The Happiness Industry. There is also a theological argument to consider: Given the fallen state of the world, and that our yearning for the good, the true, and the beautiful will not be fulfilled until the kingdom of heaven, well, it's only realistic and healthy at times to be mighty unhappy about the state of the world and the state of our souls. There is indeed a time to weep (Ecc. 3). Fortunately, there is also a time and a reason to laugh, even in this present age.
 
Bloated Prisons
Here is a trend we at Christianity Today are trying to pay more and more attention to:
More than 2.2 million people are currently incarcerated in US jails and prisons, a 500 percent increase over the past 40 years. Although the United States accounts for about 5 percent of the world's population, it houses nearly 25 percent of the world's prison population. The per capita incarceration rate in the US is . . . more than six times the rate of neighboring Canada.
The article that notes these statistics goes on to say that "840,000, or nearly 40 percent, of the 2.2 million US prisoners are African American males." The author wonders whether massive incarceration is responsible for our lower crime rate. And he suggests that judges need to speak up more.
Whether or not you buy his arguments or admonition, the facts remain stubbornly the same. The solution is not yet clear, but the first thing to do is recognize a problem that needs our national attention.
 
Romantic Love Is a Rational Choice
So argues philosophy professor Clancy Martin in a review of a book that he believes is right about romantic love. After summarizing the debate on the matter, he writes:
What's at stake is how much control over and how much responsibility we have for our emotional responses to the world. [Berit] Brogaard [in On Romantic Love] and I think that, particularly when it comes to love, the answer is: You have a lot of control and a lot of responsibility.
Popular culture says otherwise as it justifies all manner of sexual adventure in the name of romantic love. Christians have traditionally said hogwash to such justifications, and so it's refreshing to read a counterargument to pop culture taken up by a contemporary philosopher or two.
 
Ordinary Mothers, Ordinary Heroes
Such is the thesis of Amy Julia Becker's Mother's Day essay in Her.meneutics. When I watch a mother of toddlers and preschoolers navigate shopping in a grocery store, I am amazed at her patience, calmness, and creative redirection (after the repeated "Mommy, can I have . . . ?" and "I don't want to sit in the shopping cart."). As a father, I was not nearly so forbearing or creative, but leaned on the classic, "Because I said so" to get through the store. But mothers, well, they are a different and, I will grant, a better breed of human being.
 
Grace and peace,
 
Mark Galli
Mark Galli
Editor, Christianity Today

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