What better way to start the New Year than with the news that...

...the Thomist legal and moral philosopher John Finnis has been made a Commander of the British Empire.  Being Finnis, he uses the opportunity to opine:  "It is good that this award bears the name of a great and essentially beneficent institution which was conceived and pursued in a spirit of service..."  Although his bigoted views about homosexuality are well-known, it seems to me this whitewash of two centuries of imperial rape, exploitation and bloody murder is far more appalling, admitting of no rationalization in terms of Catholic dogma.  What an embarrassment for Oxford.