Ethika Politika | This Week

From Ethika Politika, our friends, and around the web. Compiled by David Mills.

Editorials

We're not going to avoid watching Schindler's List or Black Hawk Down because they show violence, but the kind of gratuitous violence offered in shows like Game of Thrones will have some effect on us. In Eyes Raised to Heaven, Alexandra DeSanctis explains that the problem isn't just that enjoying such violence affects the mind, but that it poisons the heart.

When faced with strong opposition, as Catholics are now for our defense of marriage, activist Catholics demand that everyone speak up. That can be a form of despair, argues Andrew Haines in On Giving Silence Without Consent. St. Thomas More teaches us that we can resist evil through a principled silence.

From Ethika Politika

The Executioner's Wrong. Nebraska Republicans joined Democrats in overturning the death penalty, because they follow not a moral but a hedonistic way of reasoning, writes Scott Beauchamp. Also read, while we're at it, his The Corpse Singing on the Radio.

Condom Pope Portrait Not Subversive, Challenging. The curators at the Milwaukee Art Museum think a portrait of Pope Benedict made of condoms is cool and edgy, but only, writes Charles Camosy, because they don't understand how authority works in our sexual culture.

One Faith: An Exhibition of Contemporary Catholic Art. Reviewing the exhibit "One Faith: East and West," Samantha Schroeder reports how some artists portray beauty and truth and through them help those who see the art contemplate both the creator and his creation.

Flawed Scientists, Flawed Science. Audra Nakas reports a story in Vox (of all places) on the fallibilities and failings of scientists and how this affects their science, and what this means for our treatment of them as authorities.