Religion

“Is London’s future Islamic?”

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Via Rand Simberg comes this essay by Michael Hodges.

I can’t tell if the Hodges piece is parody. If not, he reminds me of a leftist anti-Semitic high-school history teacher I had. He too used that “people of the book” line, to knock Christendom for being more hostile to Jews than Islam is and to explain away Muslim mistreatment of Jews.

In fact the Muslim record, particularly the recent Arab-Muslim record, only looks good in isolated cases or by comparison with the worst abuses of old Christendom. The modern Christian world is astonishingly tolerant by historical standards. Christian institutions have shrunk away from national government while radical Islam seeks to perpetuate Islam’s historical political totalism.

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Mark Belnick to Speak at Men’s Leadership Forum of Chicago on Thursday

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Mark A. Belnick’s talk is entitled “General Counsel Under Fire”. He will speak about being criminally prosecuted for alleged misconduct as general counsel of Tyco — and being acquitted after a jury trial. He will also speak about his spiritual journey to the Catholic Church. Date: April 19, 2007; Time: 7:30am; Place: University Club of Chicago, Cathedral Hall, 9th floor, 76 E. Monroe St., Chicago IL 60603; Cost: $40.00. Previous speakers were Robert Novak and Sen. Sam Brownback, and were very successful events. Register here.

The Rough Zones of the Ten Commandments

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Lex’s link to Robert Fogel reinforces much that is said and said often on this blog. It doesn’t seem to me particularly good if we have a wide divergence in wealth and some is back scratching. Nonetheless, I’d worry more if all incomes were the same for all the reasons mentioned here so often. It isn’t just, or even mainly, productivity that is gauged by differing wages. Our desires are different; so are our priorities. Someone who spends twenty hours a week reading to and playing with her child may not expect to be as compensated in money as if she were working a 60-hour executive week; she is, however, richly rewarded in other ways. As Fogel observes, the differences between the way we can live is not all that dramatic and many differences are driven by choice. As the comments indicate, discussions of poverty are often snapshots in time. My children should not be making the wage that their parents, after forty years of work experience and three degrees do; my husband’s mother deserves comfort but is not, at 88, a wage earner nor is she building capital but rather spending it.

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Easter Feast

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Priest: Christ is Risen
People: Truly He is Risen

The ancient rythms of eastern apostolic christianity rang out once more in Chicago just like every year but this year, somebody was missing. Josefa wasn’t around adding her cracked byelorussian voice to our romanian chants, her rolling gait was missing from the traditional procession 3 times around the church. The rock that so much of the practical life of our little church was missing and nobody had a clue. She’d been sick the week before “in the hospital” people in the know would mention to the curious just like people would mention her real story to those who asked but nobody who had not asked ever found out about the true story of the rough gem in our midst. In short, Josefa Tarasewicz was a martyr.

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It’s Hard to Become Who We Are

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I started writing a response to a comment and found it getting too long. Besides, it is personal & a bit off-topic. But in essence, I think Kelly is right. My religious friends and I am sure, Lex will find this superficial. Nonetheless, I suspect if viewed as sociology – or perhaps, an anthropological study of the tribe of academics, it may interest.

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