Divine help

I used to believe that with divine help which is available to you through genuine pleading and honest effort on your part - you can achieve peace, understanding and love between yourself and yours and your neighbours. Now I've come to believe that the latter is impossible and the former is still necessary - not to achieve perfect love, but to avoid a total schism, conflit and murder. And you're lucky if you manage to.

Egalitarianism - Freedom - Christianity

Juergen Habermas said in an interview given in the late 1980s:

"For the normative self-understanding of modernity, Christianity has functioned as more than just a precursor or catalyst. Universalistic egalitarianism, from which sprang the ideals of freedom and a collective life in solidarity, the autonomous conduct of life and emancipation, the individual morality of conscience, human rights and democracy, is the direct legacy of the Judaic ethic of justice and the Christian ethic of love. This legacy, substantially unchanged, has been the object of a continual critical reappropriation and reinterpretation. Up to this very day there is no alternative to it. And in light of the current challenges of a post-national constellation, we must draw sustenance now, as in the past, from this substance. Everything else is idle postmodern talk."

Hitler's Pope?

From Wikipedia:

"Five years after the publication of Hitler's Pope, Cornwell wrote: "I would now argue, in the light of the debates and evidence following Hitler's Pope, that Pius XII had so little scope of action that it is impossible to judge the motives for his silence during the war, while Rome was under the heel of Mussolini and later occupied by Germany."

The Judgement Method

I use the judgement method to develop my ideas. I quickly make a judgement after learning something about an issue - and express it. That expressed opinion, very often a strong one, gives me a stimulus further to investigate and relfex on the issue. This approach is riddled with risk, but it makes topics, views, philosophies involved personal and exciting.

The PR folly

Simon Jenkins has just summed up well the proportional representation: first you vote, then you learn who you voted for, and finally you get the manifesto.

Gods interenve

In an article in a Catholic weekly I read that one of the 'secret' Fatima prophecies claims that Mary, mother of Jesus, diverted a bullet aimed at a holy man and thus saved his life. The mas is supposed to be Pope John Paul II. It struck me that this is exactly how - if not for the same reasons and with the same intentions - ancient gods were believed to intervene, and be able to intervene, in the lives of mortals. Strangely perhaps, this realisation made me feel more respect for the anctient rather than lessen my faith in the Christianity.

Thank Heavens!

I went today to church expecting just a litany there (it's May). There was a mass, too. Fine - I have nothing against the Mass - as an enthusiastic, orthodox Catholic. But the priest decided to read an extensive biographical article about a prominent local priest. It went on for too long and gave too much info in a too cold church. When the priest read: ''he died at the age ...", I found myself murmuring "Thank heavens!''.

I'm visiting some relatives in the country and get another lesson in priorities. The house is ugly, the style should be getting me down (but fortunately I don't care much - can switch off my 'style sensor'), a lot of the attitude on display saddens me, but just as I was considering making a judgement I ask my relative's son (whom I considered completely talentless academically and socially-challenged) a few questions. He (13) turns out to be an ancient history buff and after half an hour of a conversation during which my jaw had a consistent downward trend, I find out that he not only knows more than me about that period (and I know quite a lot), but also has a good grip on universal history and world's geograpy. What's more he makes a lot of right connections in his mind about what he knows and asks a lot of good questions.

To embarass me more, in the eventing my cousin asks me if I could join them in the evening prayer, which I do and ask for more wisdom to never judge on trivialities (style, language, accidental features), but just on aspirations.