Blind Faith : Blind Folly

13 avril 2013

" ... SPRINGS ETERNAL"

Besides Lourdes, there are two thousand "miraculous" springs in France. Once you have located the village, just follow the signs to the one for backaches, headaches, rheumatism or pimples. The town of San Damiano in northern Italy attracts busloads of...

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11 avril 2013

"WE'RE PEOPLE TOO !"

Her words sum up a Jewish lady's protest against gender segregation in the right to pray at the sacred wall in Jerusalem. Women as well want to wail at the wall. In the Catholic Church, some women want to be priests. Tradition going back to anti-feminist...

Posté par frankophile à 23:31 - Commentaires […] - Permalien [#]

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10 avril 2013

THE POWER OF CONTAGION

The word "contagion" is usually associated with diseases like Legionellosis ("Legionnaires' Disease"), a form of pneumonia first detected in 1976. History is filled with the pernicious, devastating effects of major diseases like the Black Plague (called...

Posté par frankophile à 18:01 - Commentaires […] - Permalien [#]

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10 avril 2013

"WHAT DOES IT PROFIT A" ... PROPHET ?

The answer is : a bucket of ducats, for some of them, especially televangelists, fortune-tellers and other swindlers. But more often, according to Holy Writ about its own prophets, a less attractive destiny : being unwelcome in one's own country (tell...

Posté par frankophile à 11:55 - Commentaires […] - Permalien [#]

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6 avril 2013

"MY DADDY'S A THEOLOGIAN"

I'm pretty sure none of my children ever said that of me. Kids do ask each other what their parents do. I imagine mine said something like "He's a teacher", referring both to my stints in the States as a Religious Education Director and Professor of Theology,...

Posté par frankophile à 19:12 - Commentaires […] - Permalien [#]

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5 avril 2013

AN ALTAR-BOY FROM OZ

When you enter your 77th year as I just have, indulgent progeny and rare tolerant friends will allow you the luxury of brief, occasional, preferably infrequent bouts of nostalgia. They will not allow your organ-recitals and accounts of your most recent...

Posté par frankophile à 21:01 - Commentaires […] - Permalien [#]

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5 avril 2013

"DELENDA RELIGIO"

"Delenda Carthago", "Carthage must be destroyed" : Cato the Elder's mantra, repeated at the end of each of his discourses, whatever the subject, bore fruit years later when at the end of the Third Punic War in 146 B.C. the North African city was in fact...

Posté par frankophile à 20:10 - Commentaires […] - Permalien [#]

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5 avril 2013

THEOCRATIC FASCISM

Christopher Hitchens will long be remembered by the current generation's experience of him, and thanks to his books and especially his numerous videos, I hope, by many generations to come. Some have esteemed him - I do not - for his ability to down two...

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5 avril 2013

"CUIUS REGIO, EIUS RELIGIO"

The sixteenth century principle that you practise the same religion as your Prince, at least solved the problem of having to choose your own. It came with the territory. Today in Anglican England one can choose not to belong to the State religion, and...

Posté par frankophile à 18:36 - Commentaires […] - Permalien [#]

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3 avril 2013

"YOU WOULDN'T WANT TO KNOW !"

We use the expression, jokingly, when we want to suggest that something or some behavior is so bad, so distressing or so stupid that it would be better to say nothing about it. One could see in it another, more serious connotation. Many families face...

Posté par frankophile à 18:49 - Commentaires […] - Permalien [#]

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