Sailing the Last Voyage with Newton and Pascal
Leave it to a liberal publication like the Village Voice to put its finger on the core of the problem with our financial system: It all starts, as the headlines of recent weeks do, with these two giant banks. But in the hubbub about their bailout, few have noticed that the only federal agency with …
Continue reading "The Financial Crisis: A Generational Curse, or Just Curse a Generation?"
Looks like Memphis, Tennessee, Democrats are leading the fight against Sarah Palin. First, we had the cheap shot that U.S. Rep. Steve Cohen made about Jesus being a community organiser (which he wasn't) while Pontius Pilate was a governor (which he was, but so is Steve's fellow Democrat, Phil Bredesen.) Now we have this, from …
Continue reading "Memphis Democrats Lead the Fight Against Sarah Palin"
Continuing from before with John of Damascus' The Orthodox Faith, 4, 13: The bread and the wine are not merely figures of the body and blood of Christ (God forbid!) but the deified body of the Lord itself: for the Lord has said, "This is My body," not, this is a figure of My body: …
Continue reading "Reflections on an Orthodox View of the Eucharist: Part IV"
Continuing in this series, we get to the heart of the matter: The body which is born of the holy Virgin is in truth body united with divinity, not that the body which was received up into the heavens descends, but that the bread itself and the wine are changed into God's body and blood. …
Continue reading "Reflections on an Orthodox View of the Eucharist: Part III"
I pick up from last time in John of Damascus' The Orthodox Faith, 4,13: For it was fitting that not only the first-fruits of our nature should partake in the higher good but every man who wished it, and that a second birth should take place and that the nourishment should be new and suitable …
Continue reading "Reflections on an Orthodox View of the Eucharist: Part II"
In a recent posting on MissionalCOG on the contextualisation of Communion, the thread turned from how to contextualise it to what it meant, and specifically whether it was sacramental or simply an ordinance. Related to this question is the nature of the Eucharist. It's always bothered me that Evangelicals, who are generally solicitous about their …
Continue reading "Reflections on an Orthodox View of the Eucharist: Part I"
This week I'm starting a podcast series featuring Roman Catholic liturgical music from the 1960's and 1970's. Since the Vatican has been busy outlawing certain forms of the divine name and other reversions to the "traditional" Mass, I'm entitling this series "Mass Confusion." The best place to start the Mass is with an Introit (generally …
Hacking into Sarah Palin's Yahoo email account was a low blow: Hackers broke into the Yahoo! e-mail account that Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin used for official business as Alaska's governor, revealing as evidence a few inconsequential personal messages she has received since John McCain selected her as his running mate. "This is a …
This, from John Podhertz: The poll could, of course, be an outlier. But if it even begins to approximate the truth, it is huge news. No Republican has scored more than 39 percent of the Jewish vote in modern times, and that was Ronald Reagan in 1980, following a series of missteps by the Carter …
David Brooks goes into a long diatribe of how the attacks of Sarah Palin's experience (or lack of it) are based on snobbery. He makes this observation: In the current Weekly Standard, Steven Hayward argues that the nation's founders wanted uncertified citizens to hold the highest offices in the land. They did not believe in …
Positive Infinity 