Skip to main content

Should Catholic Traditionalist blogs take on scientific issues?

Catholic traditionalist bloggers have to take a cue from a very wise and razor sharp professor who we once knew as Joseph Ratzinger. Now known as Pope Benedict XVI, His Holiness thinks before saying or writing something on controversial issues.

When he lectured on what at first appeared to be an unflattering reference to Islam, he had the historical facts right and said it straight. Benedict XVI spoke in Regensberg to what the Vatican calls as "representatives of science". These ladies and gentlemen are experienced university lecturers and professors. Naturlich, the Pope dealt with reason and its responsible exercise in knowing the truth.

Well I couldn't say that with a recent post on Rorate Caeli on Bringing back DDT. Now why on Earth and Heaven should a blog dedicated to recovering the old tradition of the Church and promoting orthodox Catholic teaching deal with exterminating insect pests?

Any biology student knows that DDT is biologically magnified and has been linked to the gradual decline and near extinction of raptors like the bald eagle. When the USA banned DDT, eagle populations soared and now the USA national bird is out of the endangered list.

Now I suppose Rorate Caeli is pro-life and pro-family. Now why would a traditionalist Catholic blog promote an insecticide that ends up in mother's milk and poses a risk to breastfed babies? Now how pro-life is that?

Rorate Caeli and other traditionalist Catholic blogs should steer clear of scientific issues unless these issues are contrary to moral principles. Science per se is not immoral but the application of such without moral considerations is what blogs like Rorate Caeli should deal with.
Labels:

Comments

Jego said…
DDT can still be used as part of a broad spectrum of strategies against malaria instead of the only tool. With 1.5 million deaths due to malaria every year, it's time the use of DDT be studied again. Surely the indiscriminate spraying of vast areas is a no-no, but that doesnt mean we have to do away with it altogether.

Saving 1.5 million lives every year looks like being pro-life to me.
11:20 AM
Jego said…
Here's an article from the Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons on DDT for your reference.

By the way, this is the quote in full from the site "We really are so saddened by the comments we are forced to reject or delete, even in such a harmless post as the last one, on the 400th anniversary of the Douay-Rheims Bible."

... which I take to mean they deleted comments from the Douay-Rheims post, which was the harmless post they were referring to. I did not see an apology for the missing DDT post.
2:27 PM
Ben Vallejo said…
The post has been corrected. But I do stick to my point that theological blogsites should refrain from taking on scientific issues.
10:21 PM
Jego said…
Apparently, Rorate Caeli agreed with you and took the post down. ;-)
10:09 AM
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Simoun's lamp has been lit, finally.. not by one but by the many!

"So often have we been haunted by the spectre of subversion which, with some fostering, has come to be a positive and real being, whose very name steals our serenity and makes us commit the greatest blunders... If before the reality, instead of changing the fear of one is increased, and the confusion of the other is exacerbated, then they must be left in the hands of time..." Dr Jose Rizal "To the Filipino People and their Government" Jose Rizal dominates the Luneta, which is sacred to the Philippine nation as a place of martyrdom. And many perhaps all of those executed in the Luneta, with the exception of the three Filipino secular priests martyred in 1872, have read Rizal's  El Filibusterismo . Dr Rizal's second novel is a darker and more sinister one that its prequel but has much significance across the century and more after it was published for it preaches the need for revolution with caveats,  which are when the time is right and who will in...
Post a Comment
Read more

Kung bakit dapat maging wikang pambansa din ang Ingles

Isang kakatwang eksena ang nasaksihan ko sa isang pribabdong opisina kamakailan lang. Dalawang empleyado ang inatasang bigyan ng solusyon ang isang isyu tungkol sa logistics. Ang isa ang tubong Davao at ang isa ay taga Iloilo. Ang unang wika nila ay Cebuano (Bisaya) at Hiligaynon (Ilonggo). Ang dalawang wika ay halos pareho ngunit may mga katagang iba ang kahulugan sa isa't isang wika. Ginamit nila ang wika nilang kinalakihan at hindi sila nagkaintindihan. Ang nangyari tuloy ay gumamit na lang sila ng wikang Ingles! Yung na nga rin ang sabi ko. Mag-English na lang kaya kayo! At bakit di wikang Filipino ang ginamit nila? Sa totoo lang, marami pa rin ang hindi bihasa sa Filipino upang gamitin ito sa mga larangan tulad ng logistics. At hindi lamang sa mga larangang teknikal, sa mga biyahe ko sa ibat-ibat lugar sa Pilipinas, ang mga naka-paskel sa mga CR o palikuran tungkol sa pagtitipid ng tubig ay naka sulat sa 1)Wika ng rehiyon 2) Wikang Ingles 3) at minsa'y sa wikang Filipino S...
Post a Comment
Read more

Leonard Co (1953-2010), Filipino botanist

With much sadness and shock I learned from WWF chair Lory Tan that internationally renowned botanist Leonard Co was killed together with a guide and a forest ranger last Monday, 15 November in a firefight in Leyte between Armed Forces of the Philippines soldiers and Communist guerrillas. As the Philippine Daily Inquirer reports it ,  Co and his researchers were surveying a forest plot of the Energy Development Corporation (EDC) for native Philippine trees and plants especially those that are in danger of extinction, like this Rafflesia flower (the picture I got from Dr Julie Barcelona's blog . Thank you Julie) The 41 year old Communist insurgency has again claimed another life of the best and brightest of the Philippines. In Leonard Co's case, a bright life that cannot be replaced. For he was one of if not the last of  the classically trained botanists in plant taxonomy and systematics in the Philippines. While one can learn the basics of these disciplines i...
6 comments
Read more