Articles populaires – Blind Faith : Blind Folly

15 juin 2013

YOUR TURN

No, this is not another reminder that I would welcome any comments you may like to post on this blog concerning these Reflections (though if you do take the hint, so much the better). This time I want simply to share with you, in view of my age (76 and...

Posté par frankophile à 19:31 - Commentaires […] - Permalien [#]

Tags: Death, Destiny, Faithful departed, Life-expectancy, Mandela

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19 juin 2013

WHAT A COINCIDENCE !

We have all been part of those oneupmanship conversations where someone's anecdote, stretched out for the greatest effect, about an amazing coincidence s/he experienced, inevitably leads to the recounting of even more amazing coincidences. My favorite...

Posté par frankophile à 12:20 - Commentaires […] - Permalien [#]

Tags: Chance, Origin of Life, Origin of Universe, Superstition

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7 juillet 2013

A MIDSUMMER DAY'S DREAM

I have never been a Man for All Seasons. In Australia we used to say that we had only two, the wet and the dry. We may have preferred February to August, but even the latter was never the Winter of any particular discontent. Up Over, here in Europe, I...

Posté par frankophile à 11:10 - Commentaires […] - Permalien [#]

Tags: God and atheism, Lucidity, Luck, Misfortune

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16 juillet 2013

BIG BANGS

Bastille Day, the French National Holiday, is celebrated in Biarritz by popular music concerts, old fogies dancing to accordeon music, a lot of late-night drinking by younger generations and an 11 p.m. festival of fireworks to rival the best that Sydney...

Posté par frankophile à 14:26 - Commentaires […] - Permalien [#]

Tags: Cosmology, Supernovae, the Glory of God

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15 juin 2013

"DIEU ET MON DROIT"

English-speakers around the world, and even citizens of the Mother Country, are often unaware of the historical and linguistic links between England and France. The motto on the British coat-of-arms should serve to remind us all that for three hundred...

Posté par frankophile à 19:09 - Commentaires […] - Permalien [#]

Tags: Divine Right, Honi soit, Tolerance

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3 août 2013

IGNORANCE : NO OBSTACLE TO BELIEVING

Since the creation of this blog, readers have appreciated the numerous and numinous commentaries submitted by Thomas More's avatar, "Thom". His latest deserves the limelight of front-page publication not only here but in Sydney's "Catholic Weekly" if...

Posté par frankophile à 17:33 - Commentaires […] - Permalien [#]

Tags: Pope Francis, Transubstantiation, World Youth Days

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9 mai 2013

"GOOD GRIEF !"

"The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away." Somehow Job sounds better in the King James version than in any of our Catholic translations. That old suffix seems to add dignity, authority, to what in any translation is a totally absurd idea. But when you...

Posté par frankophile à 21:03 - Commentaires […] - Permalien [#]

Tags: God and the death of children, The problem of evil

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4 mai 2013

ARS GRATIA ARTIS ?

I recently came across a movie, "Exit through the Gift Shop", concerning what is known as Street Art, which, like most people, I had dismissed as "graffiti". I have found it deserves its different name. Whatever you think of contemporary "art" and this...

Posté par frankophile à 11:39 - Commentaires […] - Permalien [#]

Tags: Banksy, Street Art and Religion

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8 mai 2013

HEAVENS ABOVE !

Everything I read about the Universe never fails to amaze me. At nearly four-score and in the Autumn of my years, not only am I still learning about the extraordinary phenomena going on over our heads (in both senses of the phrase), but I react with the...

Posté par frankophile à 23:24 - Commentaires […] - Permalien [#]

Tags: Universe and Religion, Prayer and the weather

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2 août 2013

EVER HEARD OF ANTOINE D'ABBADIA ?

When you come across certain people, living or dead, it's not hard to be humble. The Basque-Irish savant (1810-1897) who lived in a Château in Hendaye a few miles south of my modest 'ouse on zeee beeech in Bidart, is one of those individuals. Like most...

Posté par frankophile à 19:49 - Commentaires […] - Permalien [#]

Tags: Astronomy, science and religion

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2 août 2013

"DON'T DISCOURAGE DONORS' CREDULITY"

I read this cynical "phrase assassine" in a French article about miraculous chapels. The point was not to bother revealing to generous Christian souls that shrines reputed for the healing powers of the nearby rivulet were in fact already famous for the...

Posté par frankophile à 12:59 - Commentaires […] - Permalien [#]

Tags: Church benefactors, church finances

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28 juin 2013

"POSEIDON PROTEGE NOUS"

In the Port Vieux, the Old Port of Biarritz, there is a small shop dealing in underwater equipment for fishermen which has a metal plate hanging above the door with the inscription "Poseidon Protège Nous", "Poseidon Protect Us". Zeus' brother, the God...

Posté par frankophile à 12:57 - Commentaires […] - Permalien [#]

Tags: Superstition, Prayer

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10 mai 2013

10 - 15 - 25 ?

The brief obituary would end simply with "Frank was 86". Or perhaps, "Frank was 91 when he passed away". Or, most unlikely, "Frank's full life ended at the remarkable age of 101". I'm not even certain I have ten years left, let alone twenty-five. But...

Posté par frankophile à 13:09 - Commentaires […] - Permalien [#]

Tags: Death The End

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9 mai 2013

"IF YOU WANT TO LEARN TO PRAY, GO TO SEA !"

As a kid, I loved Wind in the Willows, and especially the chapter "Messing About in Boats". I like crossing the Harbour in a ferry from Circular Quay to Manly, "seven miles from Sydney and a thousand miles from care", and even enjoying the few minutes...

Posté par frankophile à 11:25 - Commentaires […] - Permalien [#]

Tags: Prayer in distress

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11 mai 2013

THE LAST POST ?

Most people do not like talking about death, notably that of living family members but especially of their own. My family does not like to hear me talking of mine. When I was a kid, puritanism and puerile prudishness prevented people from using words...

Posté par frankophile à 12:31 - Commentaires […] - Permalien [#]

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13 mai 2013

"I AM A RIVER FOR MY PEOPLE !"

The grandiloquent self-congratulation of the black-robed Arab chieftain, played by Anthony Quinn, become an ally of Lawrence of Arabia in the famous film, made movie-goers smile. The point, however, is not the movie but the metaphor. Rivers, as figures...

Posté par frankophile à 22:26 - Commentaires […] - Permalien [#]

Tags: Religion and Art

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21 mai 2013

COMPOSTELLA : COMPOS MENTIS ?

To my doctor's regret, I have never been a great walker. She would be happy if I just did my daily thirty minute constitutional. But even that is an effort, to say nothing of joining a club of fanatic, retired back-packers who trudge around the villages...

Posté par frankophile à 23:04 - Commentaires […] - Permalien [#]

Tags: Pilgrimages

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22 juin 2013

TESTIMONY FROM A FORMER BELIEVER ON THE BRINK

THOM, the most assiduous contributor to the commentaries on this blog, has written me a letter he did not intend for publication. But as the personal testimony of his itinerary from Catholicism to atheism, it deserves, I feel, to be read by Believers...

Posté par frankophile à 14:23 - Commentaires […] - Permalien [#]

Tags: Renouncing faith

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16 avril 2013

STATE OF DENIAL

Alcoholics as well as families and friends of alcoholics - that covers about 99.9% of the Western world - can all identify this stage zero before what they hope will be an addict's progression towards recovery : "Problem ? What problem ? It is other people...

Posté par frankophile à 13:08 - Commentaires […] - Permalien [#]

Tags: Alcohol and Religion

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16 avril 2013

"DAD'S DEAD !"

Could happen anytime. Those replaced arteries will not hold up forever. And there are all those other creepies waiting for me, from Parkinson's to cancer of the whatever to what has this week killed Maggie Thatcher, just ten years older than I. I myself...

Posté par frankophile à 18:33 - Commentaires […] - Permalien [#]

Tags: fun at funerals

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11 mai 2013

YES YOU CAN ... COMMENT !

Some readers already have, some would like to but are afraid, others haven't because they don't know how. It's a bit hard to see, but there in tiny characters below each of my postings is the word commentaires, French that is self-explanatory to English-speakers...

Posté par frankophile à 16:09 - Commentaires […] - Permalien [#]

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19 juin 2013

A SUCKER EVERY DAY

I have just heard on French radio an advertisement for a bank. It consisted of the anonymous testimony of one of the bank's supposed customers actually saying that she is convinced that her banker puts her interest before his own. I hope you are smiling...

Posté par frankophile à 12:55 - Commentaires […] - Permalien [#]

Tags: Credulity

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7 juillet 2013

SUICIDE IN THE CATHEDRAL

The suicide in Notre Dame de Paris, May 21, 2013, will soon be forgotten, unlike a certain murder in the Cathedral of Canterbrury on December 2, 1170. Archbishop Thomas Beckett died in his empty cathedral at the hand of four knights of King Henry 2. Dominique...

Posté par frankophile à 10:32 - Commentaires […] - Permalien [#]

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18 mai 2013

PROVE JUST TWO CLAIMS AND I REST MY CASE !

You can forget the interminable arguments about the existence of God, Intelligent Design, the problem of evil and the origin of moral imperatives. You can shelve all that palaver, including mine, about Jesus' divinity, His miracles, His Resurrection,...

Posté par frankophile à 20:08 - Commentaires […] - Permalien [#]

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2 avril 2013

"SISTER ACT"

The talented actress, Whoopi Goldberg, in this highly entertaining movie, become a hit on Broadway, leads a choir of nuns singing a love-song to "My Guy". The guy in question is Jesus, who happens to be dead. Has been for 2000 years. It's a bit like being...

Posté par frankophile à 17:32 - Commentaires […] - Permalien [#]

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