Comments for The Shifting Middle at http://www.thecatholicthing.org , comment 1 to 7 out of 7 comments http://www.thecatholicthing.org Mon, 20 May 2013 22:35:05 +0100 FeedCreator 1.7.3 http://www.thecatholicthing.org/columns/2009/the-shifting-middle.html#comment-2222 RD is absolutely right, Subsidiarity is under attack by Obama, aided by Catholics like Biden and Pelosi, who have shown publicly over-and-over that they really don't know much about their faith. It is unlikely that most college-educated Catholics even know what the word means. - Chris from Maryland Tue, 30 Jun 2009 17:27:29 +0100 http://www.thecatholicthing.org/columns/2009/the-shifting-middle.html#comment-2204 Bradley...Obama is in agreement with many Church teachings? I have one word for you: subsidiarity. - RD Sun, 28 Jun 2009 18:04:17 +0100 http://www.thecatholicthing.org/columns/2009/the-shifting-middle.html#comment-2201 Bradly, to characterize this essay as crude and superficial can be little more than a projected reflection of your own understanding of Obama. Fr. Schall is like a mirror, if we don't like what we hear from him, it behooves us to take a long hard look in the intellectual mirror. Obama appears to be a lovely person, but even a superficial analysis of his statements reveal a mass of cognative dissonance. To say otherwise is crude and superficial. Compare Fr. Schall\'s sources to your own. - Achilles Sat, 27 Jun 2009 10:30:24 +0100 http://www.thecatholicthing.org/columns/2009/the-shifting-middle.html#comment-2196 Schall is just the best, a great read. I love him in this forum. I don't deny that President Obama appears a good man individually, but it is not easy to deny that in the public sphere, he is unable to take a stand. He appears our first modern President. - Matt Thu, 25 Jun 2009 21:38:16 +0100 http://www.thecatholicthing.org/columns/2009/the-shifting-middle.html#comment-2195 Crude and superficial: a priest/professor can do better than this! Fr. Schall concludes - from abortion and Obama's speaking style - that he is a sophist without a conscience. This is the latest attempt to reduce the President to a crude stereotype, while ignoring the fact that he is also human, baptized (though still a sinner), a devoted husband/father, and in agreement with many church positions (poverty, immigration, income distribution, Iraq War, health care, the environment, etc.) - Bradley Thu, 25 Jun 2009 18:52:07 +0100 http://www.thecatholicthing.org/columns/2009/the-shifting-middle.html#comment-2194 Well said, Fr. Schall. Politically, it is ingenious because the shifting middle shifts in the direction desired by whomever sets the question. So it becomes possible to label "extreme" what had seemed to everyone only months before to be moderate. So it is that allowing gays a civil marriage is being framed as the moderate view - with dissenters (51%+ of CALIFORNIANS... certainly higher elsewhere) being labeled as extremists and exclusive. Thus the debate is not won, but undermined. - Ryan Haber Thu, 25 Jun 2009 15:31:26 +0100 http://www.thecatholicthing.org/columns/2009/the-shifting-middle.html#comment-2192 Fortunately for us, Aristotle too rejected sophistic relativity for objective truth: While acknowledging that ‘it is a difficult business to be good; because in any given case it is difficult to find the mid-point (Nicomachean Ethics, 1109a)’, he asserted that ‘in all our conduct it is the mean that is to be commended. But one should incline sometimes toward excess and sometimes toward deficiency, because in this way we shall most easily hit upon the mean, that is, the right course (1109b).’ - Stephen MacLean Thu, 25 Jun 2009 06:57:23 +0100