C. S. Lewis, one of my greatest influences, opined that we don’t burn witches because we don’t believe they exist or that they can harm others. If we did think that people were casting efficacious spells of black magic to harm others, surely we would punish them.
In other words, we have a difference of opinion of fact with those who burnt witches; we have not really made a moral advance as compared to them. Continue reading “Burning Witches and Stoning Adulteresses”
(This was too long for Facebook.) I have never found my crystal ball very reliable, but I’m taking it out again anyway:
I visited someone in a nursing home this evening. She absent-mindedly left Glenn Beck on TV — my first actual exposure to the guy.
It was as bad as I feared. Continue reading ““I have a conspiracy theory.””
“Every time I move to a new place, I’m asked by the locals, “How do you like living here?” I’m never quite sure how to answer that question, and for the longest time I didn’t know why. And then one day it dawned on me, I couldn’t answer the question because I couldn’t figure out what the difference was between one place and the next.” Continue reading “Vocations – true and fancied”
Fr. Siarhei Hardum greets the Presbyterians, and asks whether the Holy Spirit that motivates some Protestants to create a new pseudo-Christian paganism is the same Holy Spirit that tells the Orthodox to contend for “the faith once delivered to the saints”?
Bold words.
HT Lindsey Nelson.
Mirror of Justice is “A blog dedicated to the development of Catholic legal theory.” I apparently discovered it relatively late in the game, as it already is the second “stickiest” blog, trailing only the Volokh Conspiracy site (another law-oriented site). In other words, MOJ readers spend lots of time engaging what they read there.
This isn’t arcane stuff you need to be a lawyer to appreciate, although being a lawyer probably deepens the appreciation — or the opposition.
It’s sometimes philosophical (are there absolutes? more than one?), sometimes Front Porchy (are the suburbs bad?), sometimes surprisingly eclectic (does belief in interreligious unity reek of colonialism and empire?), and increasingly, one of my favorites.
You’re not likely to find this going on in the Episcopal Church, but there’s apparently a trend in Pentecostal Churches to exorcise “demons” of this, “demons” of that, and “demons” of the other thing. Continue reading “Modern exorcisms”
Especially to Orthodox readers of this blog, I commend a new (to me) blog “A Vow of Conversation.” The author, Macrina Walker, says of herself:
When I first started this blog I was a Roman Catholic monastic. I am now exclaustrated from my monastery and am preparing to enter the Orthodox Church. I am South African, am presently in the Netherlands and my life is in a state of flux.
I’m looking forward gradually to reviewing her promising “Completed Series” as well as subscribing to her new postings.
I began a few days ago to write about (a) whether there’s a conflict between the robust religious freedom we’ve known in the past and “the gay rights movement” and (b) whether the Obama administration is friendly toward the latter to the detriment of the former.
The piece sort of spun out of control. Things are just too interconnected. So I’m starting fresh, determined not to allow my modest objective to sink beneath the waves of “TMI” (too much information). Continue reading “Are gay rights in conflict with religious freedom?”
When they’re not insisting that we’re beloved by one and all, certain U.S. “leaders” are impugning the motives of those who don’t love us.
But there are reasons why they might hate us. Not one of them is “for our freedom.” Continue reading “Why do they hate us so?”
