Piskie self-parody
Laugh or you'd cry. The crying is also needed, though, I suppose. Just as for the Kirk, lots of prayer needed for the Anglican Communion's Scottish branch.
(function() { (function(){function b(g){this.t={};this.tick=function(h,m,f){var n=void 0!=f?f:(new Date).getTime();this.t[h]=[n,m];if(void 0==f)try{window.console.timeStamp("CSI/"+h)}catch(q){}};this.getStartTickTime=function(){return this.t.start[0]};this.tick("start",null,g)}var a;if(window.performance)var e=(a=window.performance.timing)&&a.responseStart;var p=0 Ego quos amo, arguo, et castigo. Æmulare ergo, et pœnitentiam age.
laodicea
Monday, February 28, 2005
Piskie self-parody
Laugh or you'd cry. The crying is also needed, though, I suppose. Just as for the Kirk, lots of prayer needed for the Anglican Communion's Scottish branch.
Sunday, February 27, 2005
Islam-*compatible* banking
Now, we agreed, somewhere, that it may not be permissible to bank with an Islamic bank. But how about having a no-interest etc. bank account with a "normal" bank?
Gabriel Biel
The subject on which Biel held the most progressive views is political economy. Roscher, who with Schmoller introduced him to modern students of economics, declares that Biel's grasp of economics enabled him not only to understand the work of his predecessors, but to advance beyond them. (Cf. Geschicte der Nationalokonomik in Deutschland, 21 sqq.) According to Biel, the just price of a commodity is determined chiefly by human needs, by its scarcity, and by the difficulty of producing it. His enumeration includes all the factors that govern market price, and is more complete and reasonable than any made by his predecessors. (Cf. Garnier, L'idée du just prix, 77.) The same author maintains that concerning the occupation of the merchant or trader, Biel is more advanced than St. Thomas, since he attaches no stigma to it, but holds it to be good in itself, and the merchant entitled to remuneration because of his labour, risks, and expense. Biel's discussion of these subjects is contained in book IV of his commentary on the "Sentences". He wrote a special work on currency, ein wahrhaft goldenes Buch, in which he stigmatizes the debasing of coinage by princes as dishonest exploitation of the people. In the same work he severely condemns those rulers who curtailed the popular rights of forest, meadow, and water, and who imposed arbitrary burdens of taxation, as well as the rich sportsmen who encroached upon the lands of the peasantry.
His works are: "Sacri canonis Missae expositio resolutissima literalis et mystica" (Brixen, 1576); an abridgment of this work, entitled "Epitome expositionis canonis Missae" (Antwerp, 1565); "Sermones" (Brixen, 1585), on the Sundays and festivals of the Christian year, with a disquisition on the plague and a defence of the authority of the pope; "Collectorium sive epitome in magistri sententiarum libros IV" (Brixen, 1574); "Tractatus de potestate et utilitate monetarum".
Thursday, February 24, 2005
Oh no
oremus pro papa nostro.
Arinze for Pope!
pro-abortion politicians should not receive Holy Communion. Cardinal Arinze
stated: "The answer is clear. If a person says I am in favour of killing
unborn babies whether they be four thousand or five thousand, I have been in
favour of killing them. I will be in favour of killing them tomorrow and
next week and next year. So, unborn babies, too bad for you. I am in favour
that you should be killed, than the person turn around and say I want to
receive Holy Communion. Do you need any Cardinal from the Vatican to answer
that?"
[LifeSiteNews.com, 16 February] via SPUC
oooh, here's more.
Wednesday, February 23, 2005
Elitism defended, injustice bashed
Tolkienistas
Oh, the magic of Google - someone has worked all this out and more besides. I had forgotten that 25th March is also traditionally thought to have been the day of the Crucifixion. Er, and someone else says that the end of the world is also expected for that day. Oh.
This year the Annunciation and Good Friday fall on the same day. John Donne wrote about this most beautifully in 1608.
... Sad and rejoiced she's seen at once, and seen
At almost fifty, and at scarce fifteen ;
At once a son is promised her, and gone ;
Gabriell gives Christ to her, He her to John ...
Tuesday, February 22, 2005
Thursday, February 17, 2005
Not as good as Poland
From Catholic Ragemonkey.
Negatively medieval
Ss Cyril and Methodius, pray for the children of your evangelism!
Incidentally, if anyone still feels the need to construct a history where the Middle Ages are a big black hole, might I suggest plumbing as a topic? I feel that there would be no harm at all in leaping from Antiquity to Modernity in the field of bathroom design. (But don't mention this option in Brussels. Asserting that the EU's true basis is upon the principles of effective plumbing would be taking this too far... The BBC meanwhile offers a relatively balanced view of the current Kulturkampf [by which no very specific analogy is meant, so please don't point out how unlike Wilhelmine Germany the current climate is!])
Tuesday, February 15, 2005
Tolkien against euthanasia
'Authority is not given to you, Steward of Gondor, to order the hour of your death,' answered Gandalf. 'And only the heathen kings, under the domination of the Dark Power, did thus, slaying themselves in pride and despair, murdering their kin to ease their own deaths.'
- The Return of the KingThursday, February 10, 2005
Odi et amor Radio 4
This was, however, followed by an excellent fifteen-minute devastation by Simon Heffer of the notion that 'progress' is per se a Good Thing. (Unfortunately, it can't be heard again on the Beeb website.) Most timeous, given Labour's magnificently meaningless new slogan: Britain, forward not back! How many hours of focus-grouping did it take to come up with something so completely devoid of signification (or indeed significance)? They might as well have run with "We'll do Good Things, and we're really modern - you like modern things, don't you?" That seems to be the general notion intended, even if it's just a trifle less catchy.
Witch burnings, by, A Witch
Tuesday, February 08, 2005
Eudaimonism in the Guardian?
(Not sure if that latter link will work outwith this University network; conditional apologies.)
Monday, February 07, 2005
Another St Andrews and Edinburgh indult update
Saturday, February 05, 2005
Holiness or eloquence?
Berulle wrote on his knees what he heard him say, and that St Vincent de Paul,
when leaving him, would exclaim: "No man has ever spoken like him!" After an hour's interview with him, St Jane Francis de Chantal cried "If our Blessed
Father, Francis de Sales, can teach men, Father de Conden can teach angels!"
(Abbe Bougard)
Now, of whom of the above have you heard? (The placing of conjunctions at the end of sentences is an abomination up with which we shall not put.)
For Ervin Alacsi
Thursday, February 03, 2005
In case anyone doesn't know.
A Lib Dem MSP is proposing a bill to legalise assisted suicide in Scotland. It is in the consultation process (pdf file there), and submissions are invited before 15th April this year. Masters of rhetoric, write your letters now - or, indeed, more pertinently, those possessed of the facts and a sensible manner of arranging them. (So simple yet so difficult...)
(While pootling around the Holyrood website, I also find a proposed bill to prohibit big shops opening on Christmas and New Year's Day. Opinions requested by Monday 7th, should you have any.)
The progress of evidence submitted concerning Lord Joffe's proposed bill can be followed here.
A regular plan for the destruction of the Christian religion
"Along with the monied interest, a new description of men had grown up, with whom that interest soon formed a close and marked union; I mean the political men of letters. Men of letters, fond of distinguishing themselves, are rarely averse to innovation. Since the decline of the life and greatness of Louis the Fourteenth, they were not so much cultivated either by him, or by the regent, or the successors to the crown; nor were they engaged to the court by favours and emoluments so systematically as during the splendid period of that ostentatious and not impolitic reign. What they lost in the old court protection, they endeavoured to make up by joining in a sort of incorporation of their own; to which the two academies of France, and afterwards, the vast undertaking of the Encyclopædia, carried on by a society of these gentlemen, did not a little contribute.
"The literary cabal had some years ago formed something like a regular plan for the destruction of the Christian religion. This object they pursued with a degree of zeal which hitherto had been discovered only in the propagators of some system of piety. They were possessed with a spirit of proselytism in the most fanatical degree; and from thence, by an easy progress, with the spirit of persecution according to their means. 1 What was not to be done towards their great end by any direct or immediate act, might be wrought by a longer process through the medium of opinion. To command that opinion, the first step is to establish a dominion over those who direct it. They contrived to possess themselves, with great method and perseverance, of all the avenues to literary fame. Many of them indeed stood high in the ranks of literature and science. The world had done them justice; and in favour of general talents forgave the evil tendency of their peculiar principles. This was true liberality; which they returned by endeavouring to confine the reputation of sense, learning, and taste to themselves or their followers. I will venture to say that this narrow, exclusive spirit has not been less prejudicial to literature and to taste, than to morals and true philosophy. These atheistical fathers have a bigotry of their own; and they have learnt to talk against monks with the spirit of a monk. But in some things they are men of the world. The resources of intrigue are called in to supply the defects of argument and wit. To this system of literary monopoly was joined an unremitting industry to blacken and discredit in every way, and by every means, all those who did not hold to their faction. To those who have observed the spirit of their conduct, it has long been clear that nothing was wanted but the power of carrying the intolerance of the tongue and of the pen into a persecution which would strike at property, liberty, and life."
Tuesday, February 01, 2005
Legalisation of prostitution
Oh, oh, another one!
I was going to quote but you can all go and read it all over again.