Two Questions on Insensitivity

1) I have been in a discussion on the subject of the Ground Zero mosque on another blog, where John expressed that the Ground Zero mosque is good and that the insensitive argument doesn't hold water, while I think that the building of the mosque is insensitive to the 9/11 victims' families and should not be built in that location if the Imam really does want to "build bridges".  Well, in my first part of the discussion on his blog I mentioned the insensitivity issue/argument as well as other issues related to 9/11 and he came back at me with a response saying the insensitivity issue/argument wasn't legitimate and the concerns connect Islam to violence when that connection shouldn't be.  Anyways, I tried to show how insensitive he was being without getting personal and insensitive myself but I felt I had no choice but present a hypothetical personal scenario to present a compelling and thoughtful argument expressing just how insensitive it is for he and others to think that  it is good for this mosque to be built basically at Ground Zero.  Was I wrong to do this? Was it legitimate for me to point his insensitivity out in this way at what seemed to be the last resort?  Is it wrong as a last resort to get personal and insensitive in a hypothetical scenario?  Should you just move on and forget about proving your argument or persuading the other party? What is your position on the Ground Zero mosque?


2) Do you think it is appropriate to show pictures of aborted babies in public? Should we be "insensitive" to others when showing the truth, that abortion kills?

If you can think of any other occasions when you think it is acceptable to be insenstive for the greater cause or to expose the truth or tell the truth please let me know.

Is Obama a Muslim?

Here is the transcript of Obama's interview with Cathleen Falsani discussing his faith:


FALSANI:

Have you always been a Christian?


OBAMA:

I was raised more by my mother and my mother was Christian.


FALSANI:

Any particular flavor?


OBAMA:

No.


My grandparents who were from small towns in Kansas. My grandmother was Methodist. My grandfather was Baptist. This was at a time when I think the Methodists felt slightly superior to the Baptists. And by the time I was born, they were, I think, my grandparents had joined a Universalist church.

So, my mother, who I think had as much influence on my values as anybody, was not someone who wore her religion on her sleeve. We'd go to church for Easter. She wasn't a church lady.

As I said, we moved to Indonesia. She remarried an Indonesian who wasn't particularly, he wasn't a practicing Muslim. I went to a Catholic school in a Muslim country. So I was studying the Bible and catechisms by day, and at night you'd hear the prayer call.

So I don't think as a child we were, or I had a structured religious education. But my mother was deeply spiritual person, and would spend a lot of time talking about values and give me books about the world's religions, and talk to me about them. And I think always, her view always was that underlying these religions were a common set of beliefs about how you treat other people and how you aspire to act, not just for yourself but also for the greater good.

And, so that, I think, was what I carried with me through college. I probably didn't get started getting active in church activities until I moved to Chicago.

The way I came to Chicago in 1985 was that I was interested in community organizing and I was inspired by the Civil Rights movement. And the idea that ordinary people could do extraordinary things. And there was a group of churches out on the South Side of Chicago that had come together to form an organization to try to deal with the devastation of steel plants that had closed. And didn't have much money, but felt that if they formed an organization and hired somebody to organize them to work on issues that affected their community, that it would strengthen the church and also strengthen the community.

So they hired me, for $13,000 a year. The princely sum. And I drove out here and I didn't know anybody and started working with both the ministers and the lay people in these churches on issues like creating job training programs, or afterschool programs for youth, or making sure that city services were fairly allocated to underserved communites.

This would be in Roseland, West Pullman, Altgeld Gardens, far South Side working class and lower income communities.

And it was in those places where I think what had been more of an intellectual view of religion deepened because I'd be spending an enormous amount of time with church ladies, sort of surrogate mothers and fathers and everybody I was working with was 50 or 55 or 60, and here I was a 23-year-old kid running around.

I became much more familiar with the ongoing tradition of the historic black church and it's importance in the community.

And the power of that culture to give people strength in very difficult circumstances, and the power of that church to give people courage against great odds. And it moved me deeply.

So that, one of the churches I met, or one of the churches that I became involved in was Trinity United Church of Christ. And the pastor there, Jeremiah Wright, became a good friend. So I joined that church and committed myself to Christ in that church CONTINUED

Never Forget 9/11; Can Archbishop Dolan Ease Tensions?

I never thought that anyone could possibly forget about a horrific tragedy such as 9/11, and yet somehow it seems that those folks who are for a mosque being built a stone's throw away from Ground Zero have forgotten about 9/11.  We don't have a site honoring the Japanese at Pearl Harbor, so why should we have a mosque built so, so, so close to where 3000 innocents were killed by Muslim extremists on 9/11?

Here is a video to help reawaken those who may have forgotten about that tragic day 9 years ago:



H/T LCResistance

Here is Fr. Jonathan Morris and Megyn Kelly on Archbishop Dolan mediating the mosque debate. I agree with Fr. Jonathan Morris.  Do you think that there are limits to religious liberty?  Both the cultural center idea or moving the mosque to a much less sensitive place sound like good and respectful solutions to me.