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The EditorsNovember 21, 2011

For Better or Worse

The multimillion-dollar wedding of the reality show star Kim Kardashian and the N.B.A. star Kris Humphries was broadcast in a two-part, four-hour special on E!. Each segment was watched by more than four million viewers. Their divorce—just 72 days later—has attracted even more attention. On her blog, Ms. Kardashian lamented getting “caught up with the hoopla and the filming of the TV show” and said she “probably should have ended my relationship” before the marriage. But these days, even couples without reality shows easily can be swept up in the preparations for their big day.

Wedding planning has become a multibillion-dollar industry (the Kardashian cake alone reportedly cost $20,000). Then there are the television programs dedicated to finding the perfect dress, venue or florist and gawking at the not-so-perfect “bridezilla” tendencies of some women. One wedding planner laments the loss of manners and concern for guests at Southern weddings. She told The New York Times that many couples she meets are worried only about how they will benefit from their day, and they neglect the community that supports them.

Those concerned with promoting the sanctity of marriage may want to start by helping couples understand the serious nature of such unions. While reality shows can be entertaining and there is joy in finding the perfect invitation, worries about the details of the big day should not replace preparations for the ones that will follow. Couples must not lose sight of the fact that through marriage they enter into a commitment more important and, one hopes, longer lasting than the one they make to the caterer.

Civic Piety

The House of Representatives worked late on Nov. 1. The high jobless rate and President Obama’s jobs bill were not the order of business. The millions of Americans facing the threat of foreclosures on their home mortgages were not on the agenda. With an abundance of pompous words, the House was passing a bill to strengthen the status of “in God we trust” as the national motto.

The idea appears in the “Star-Spangled Banner” (1814): “And this be our motto ‘In God is our trust.’” The current wording first appeared on coins in 1864, giving a strange challenge to the injunction in Matthew’s Gospel that one cannot serve both God and Mammon.

The motto has stirred controversy. Theodore Roosevelt thought its association with money to be irreverent and “close to sacrilege.” It has survived legal challenges, though, and in 1984 the Supreme Court ruled that the motto did not violate the establishment clause because it had “lost through rote repetition any significant religious content.” This is subtle jurisprudence: it is not unlawful because it is meaningless.

With Congress’s approval rate now at 9 percent, it is hard to imagine the good to be derived from their dabbling in civic piety. Their endorsement hardly enhances trust in God. And trust does not absolve one from work. Instead of revising mottos or slogans, the country needs members of Congress to stop bickering, stonewalling and obstructing. They might also show that they trust others who trust in God: government workers, unions, the powerless, the poor, members of the other party. Then the people might even start trusting them.

Vatican Science Project

This month the Vatican convened a meeting of scientists to discuss the future of stem-cell therapies. The conference was part of an unusual foray by the Vatican into the field of scientific education and research. Teaming up with NeoStem, an international research company that focuses on adult stem cells, the Vatican has invested $1 million in a foundation aimed at promoting adult stem-cell research. The goal is to advance stem-cell therapies that do not require the destruction of human embryos.

“We don’t see reason why we have to sacrifice human lives, while we have technologies that do the same [work] without harming anyone and without raising any moral difficulties,” said Tomasz Trafny, chairman of the science and faith department at the Pontifical Council for Culture.

The initiative has met resistance from some scientists who are wary of the Vatican’s intentions. They say the church is trying to close off an avenue for research when scientists should be encouraged to pursue all potential cures to intractable diseases. Yet at a time when embryonic stem-cell research is being fiercely promoted, the Vatican has every right to dedicate its own resources to avenues of research that are just as promising.

Among these is the field of induced pluripotent stem-cell research, which avoids many of the ethical dilemmas associated with stem-cell research. First created in 2007, these cells closely resemble embryonic stem cells, and because they come from the patient, they offer benefits that embryonic stem cells do not. More important, they do not require experimentation on human embryos. The Vatican is right to take advantage of this opportunity to find common ground with the scientific community. The scientists who took part in the stem-cell conference should be commended for collaborating with an unlikely partner.

Comments are automatically closed two weeks after an article's initial publication. See our comments policy for more.
Andrew DiLiddo
12 years 4 months ago
Why do scientists want embryonic cells if adult pluripotent stem cells can be used interchangeably, if you will, in their experiments?  What advantage(s) do the embryonic cells provide to the research which makes them more in demand?
Andrew DiLiddo
12 years 4 months ago
Regarding Civic Piety and the priorities of Congress and the editors' comments I say:
AMEN, AMEN, I SAY TO YOU, AMEN!  
C Walter Mattingly
12 years 4 months ago
While our editors are amiss in their implication that the House has not concerned itself with job-creating bills-over a dozen such have been passed to the democratic-controlled Senate where they have been voted down-there remains the question of the presence of the word "God" in the public arena. Our editors are correct in that the sphere of religion is and always has been entwined with power, money, etc, as Tobias Smolett's great pun on the 18th century English marriage, "Holy Mattermoney," wonderfully conveys. Yet there are those who wish the word deleted from public discourse.

"God is dead: but as the human race is constituted, there will be perhaps caves for millenniums yet, in which people will show his shadow.  And we-we still have to overcome his shadow."
Friedrich Nietzsche.

No doubt the word "God" is under attack. Does America wish to assist Nietzsche? To consign those who wish to retain the word that conveys him to the caves, until the last of these Neanderthals dies off?
 
Jim McCrea
12 years 4 months ago
I am soooooo glad that my partner of 40 years and I cannot be married because to do so would be to damage the "sanctity of marriage." Oh yes, indeed.
12 years 4 months ago

Re: Civic Piety 11.21.11










I found your list of those persons who "trust in God" and therefore deserve the trust of Congress to be quite revealing: government workers, unions, the powerless, and the poor make your list. Business owners, managers, couples who avoid poverty by living in a covenantal relationship, and non-union workers don't make your list.










I assure you that not all members of the groups you name trust in God, and I can further assure you that some persons in the groups you omitted from your list trust in God faithfully.










You ask why Congress spends so much time bickering: Because some Members of Congress think rigidly; rejecting the ideas of other Members because of an irrational prejudice against the group to which the other Members belong. Your Commentary displays the same kind of prejudice.

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