I have added two new books to the library. The newer one is medical Ethics by Richard
A. McCormick. The title is, Health and Medicine in the Catholic Tradition. Subtitled,
Tradition in Transition. The moral theology department of Creighton University, Omaha,
Nebraska singles out McCormick. See Tod Salzman at Creighton U. and look under
deontology.
The best thing about McCormick is that he writes an American English. There are very
organic, very meaty examples taken from life. Those examples can bring us up short,
as when McCormick takes us inside a heroin addict house in New York City. Or goes
into a cancer ward with the famous Alexander Solzhenitzen. Or he drops a line about
a friend who went insane. Was anything worth that? McCormick asks us why? do we
really believe that these self-ruined people are God’s special creation? Is this really His
way of revealing? We can’t know. But until we ask this unanswerable question the rest
makes no sense at all.
McCormick is very careful to identify his own position: he features himself as “the radical
middle,” an identity that he acknowledges could be arrogant. The book is a great read.
No harm in skipping to the last chapter on abortion and sexual ethics. It is the best part.
Not to mention the great footnotes. A tour de force, McCormick spells out his opinions
and our options. ... really! It is a book that can fully reward a fifteen minute quick-skim
read. Then, dare you to put it down.
The other is the 1963, essays on The Renewal of the Liturgy. Skip to the last one, The
Future, its Hopes and Difficulties, for a frank and open discussion of the obstacles.
Not to be outdone, there is a reflection posted. By me.
Egypt and the Arab world are one the edge of a cultural explosion. Some of it, at
least, was anticipated by Egypt’s Nobel Laureate. Naguib Mahfouz. Many Arabic
speaking people grew up with his novels and the movies made from them. His Nobel
Laureate Address is recommended for a fresh insight into the world view of an Arabic
writer.
http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/literature/laureates/
1988/mahfouz-lecture.html