felix hominum

Deputy Mayor sorry about burning New Testaments...

The burning of hundreds of New Testaments by yeshiva students in Or Yehuda last week was regrettable and unplanned, the city's deputy mayor, the man who spurred the students to act, told The Jerusalem Post on Tuesday.

Deputy Mayor Uzi Aharon of Shas used the opportunity of speaking to the Post, which publishes a monthly Christian Edition, to apologize to Christians worldwide, saying he hoped the incident would not inflame tensions between Jews and Christians.

Following the publication of the story on Tuesday, however, many messianic Jewish and other Christian groups expressed grave concern over the increasingly violent nature of anti-missionary activity in Israel.

Aharon had a very busy Tuesday. In the morning, Ma'ariv ran a story on how he organized to retrieve and burn hundreds of New Testaments given to Ethiopian Jews in his city by local messianic Jews. By 9 a.m. he was on an Army Radio news-talk show defending his actions, which he called "purging the evil among us."

At 10:30 he was on Channel 2's morning news show saying that Ethiopian immigrants in Or Yehuda were being encouraged to go against Judaism by messianic Jews. "We need to stop being ashamed of our Jewishness and to fight those who are breaking the law by missionizing against us," he said.

But by the early afternoon he had already been interviewed by Russian, Italian and French TV, explaining to their highly offended audiences back home how he had not meant for the Bibles to be burned, and trying to undo the damage caused by the news [and photographs] of Jews burning New Testaments.

But then he also told The Associated Press that he didn't condemn the Bible burning, calling it a "commandment."

from the Jerusalem Post

I saw this article a while ago, and have been interested in the various responses to this incident.  As numerous voices have said, this is an ironic picture, to say the least.

 

IDF and Brothers in Arms

I found this an interesting mix:  footage of the IDF (Israeli Defense Forces) with Dire Straights' "Brothers in Arms".  Powerful, provocative, or propaganda?

These mist covered mountains
Are a home now for me
But my home is the lowlands
And always will be
Some day you'll return to
Your valleys and your farms
And you'll no longer burn
To be brothers in arms

Through these fields of destruction
Baptism of fire
I've witnessed your suffering
As the battles raged higher
And though they did hurt me so bad
In the fear and alarm
You did not desert me
My brothers in arms

There's so many different worlds
So many different suns
And we have just one world
But we live in different ones

Now the sun's gone to hell
And the moon's riding high
Let me bid you farewell
Every man has to die
But it's written in the starlight
And every line on your palm
We're fools to make war
On our brothers in arms

The Real Da Vinci Code

A computer technician has claimed to have cracked a real Da Vinci code, by finding musical notes encoded in the masterpiece The Last Supper.
Leonardo Da Vinci left clues to a 40-second musical composition in his painting, Giovanni Maria Pala said.

Each loaf of bread in the picture represents a note, he said, which combine to sound "like a requiem".  Alessandro Vezzosi, director of Tuscany's Da Vinci museum, said the theory was "plausible".  The 15th century painting depicts Jesus' last meal with the 12 Apostles before his arrest and crucifixion.

Mr Pala found that by drawing the five lines of a musical staff across the painting, the loaves of bread on the table and the hands of Jesus and the Apostles could each represent a musical note.

Mr Vezzosi, director of the Museo Ideale in the painter's home town Vinci, said that while Da Vinci was noted for his paintings, sculptures and inventions, he was also a musician.

"There's always a risk of seeing something that is not there, but it's certain that the spaces (in the painting) are divided harmonically," he said.

"Where you have harmonic proportions, you can find music."

from the BBC

Remembrance Day- last night at the Mess

The last time Trevor and I had a long evening together was just before he headed out. 

He would come up from Vancouver for training exercises.  When he had some free time, we would have him over to our place, have some food and wine and good conversation, and occasionally he would crash at our place for the night.  I would get invitations to an event or two.  My previous parish had a sizable representation from the Armed Forces.  Being the Padre had its privileges, and its burdens.

We had an evening at the Officers' Mess just before he left.  It was one of those conversations which only two guys who have known each other since college could have.  We laughed about where our various paths have led;  he joked that I had to become a priest because he would never allow anyone else to baptize his kids.  I told him I still wasn't sure I would trust him with a gun.  We spoke of why we believed we were each "called" to what we were doing.

"I was attending a shura, a council meeting of elders, outside of Kandahar city," Greene writes.

"I had taken my helmet off out of respect for the elders, a practice that we all followed at that time. Only the quick reaction and lightning reflexes of Capt. Kevin Schamuhn, Third Battalion, Princess Patricia's Canadian Light Infantry, who shot him down, prevented him from taking a second bite and saved my life."

Now, 18 months later, Greene is recuperating from his injuries. He has endured 13 months in Vancouver General Hospital and is undergoing rehabilitation at Alberta's Centennial Centre with his fiancée Debbie Lepore and their young daughter Grace.

"I'm in a wheelchair now," writes Greene, now a Canadian army captain.
"My elbows and wrists ache from being clenched at night, my hands don't work.  As I dictate this, my voice is at the level of a whisper, much improved, I'm told, from earlier communication via eye blinks.  I'm on painkillers and sleeping pills. I have dents in my skull and double vision, but my eyes aren't crossed, my speech isn't slurred and I don't drool.

"I am one of the lucky ones, I came home to the love and support of a beautiful, incredible woman and a baby girl who I am looking forward to spending the rest of my days with, and a large group of friends who have been steadfastly supportive.

"I will eventually heal, however, and I dedicate this column to those who have fallen."

From Capt Trevor Greene, read the whole story at
The Toronto Star

Budziszewski on Francis Schaeffer: A Christian Manifesto

I was in high school when Francis Schaeffer published A Christian Manifesto in 1981.  By the time I was an undergrad a few years later, I had been introduced to Schaeffer by association with IVCF.  Well, actually, it was by association with a particular student who was involved in IVCF.  I was rather partial at the time to a rather more liturgical form of Christian piety.  In those days they served sherry after High Mass on Thursdays.  But I digress.

In "Evangelicals in the Public Square", Budziszewski claims "it was Schaeffer who first made evangelicals aware of the culture war, an odd sort of war in which, he complained, so far only the other side had shown up to fight [73].  In response to what he saw as a growing systemic program of secular humanism, Schaeffer claimed that Christians have been negligent because they "have seen things in bits and pieces instead of totals". (Manifesto, rev. ed.; Wheaton: Crossway, 1982, p 17).

Budziszewski examines several of Schaeffer's points.  First is the gradual replacement of a "vaguely Christian" worldview (Manifesto, 17) with the worldview of secular humanism.  In great part Schaeffer blames lawyers and liberal theologians [Budziszewski, 74-75].  What has happened, Schaeffer argued, is that Christian pietism has allowed for a compartmentalization of faith - Christians "have acted as though nothing more were at stake than a few particular truths, like Christ's virgin birth..." [75]  Budziszewski see in this a bit of a swipe at the Fundamentalist movement.  While the "secularists" have seen things in terms of transforming a whole society, Christians have been involved in only "bits and pieces".

Authority and the State: aside

Schaeffer was concerned with the removal of moral absolutes.  The overall result of the secularizing tendency, particularly in the state, is to eliminate any basis for authority beyond the state.  The flip side of course is that there is then no limiting of the state:  it is the state which can grant rights, and therefore the state can remove them.  There is no grounding of authority in anything higher than the collective.

Whereas Canada is founded upon principles that recognize the supremacy of God and the rule of law:

It is interesting to stop at this point and consider the preamble to our own Charter of Rights and Freedoms.  Why does our Charter recognize "the supremacy of God" and the "rule of law" - in that order?  It is argued by some that such concepts and language have no place in the state.  But what are the implications of removing any notion of an authority higher than the state? And what are the implications for a state which recognizes no authority, no "supremacy", greater than its own collective?

To be continued:  laundry calls...

related posts:

• J. Budziszewski: Evangelicals in the Public Square 
• Budziszewski on Carl FH Henry, Evangelical Politics and The Uneasy Conscience
• Coffee and the Charter of Rights

'Jewish' French cardinal dies at 80

Cardinal Jean-Marie Lustiger, a Jew who converted to Catholicism and rose through church hierarchy to become one of the most influential Roman Catholic figures in France, died Sunday, the Paris archbishop's office said. He was 80...

World Jewish Congress (WJC) Deputy Secretary-General Maram Stern released a statement describing Lustiger as someone who "always knew what anti-Semitism, persecution and hatred meant for the Jewish people, and fought strenuously to overcome them. That is what he will be remembered for by many in the Jewish world."

Stern said: "Together with the late Pope John Paul II, Cardinal Lustiger was instrumental in fostering dialogue and a better understanding between Catholics and Jews, both on a personal and an institutional level. His efforts are a shining example to those who want foster mutual respect and understanding between religions and cultures."

from the Jerusalem Post

There is also a rather spirited discussion at the J'lem Post site.  Can one be a "Jewish" Roman Catholic Cardinal?

Caving in to multiple demands, I submit to the meme

I tout this blog as the place where memes go to die, but with tagging from both Alice the Camel and Magic Statistics, here are 8 things that most readers probably don't know about me:

1.  With the help of an accomplice who is now a respected member of our Armed Forces, I once successfully pirated a schooner in Halifax harbour.  And I still have the belaying pins to prove it.

2.  I have spent an entire summer playing nothing but the Goldberg Variations for up to 3 hours a day (buy it was only on a baby grand).

3. Although I own and play a number of guitars, my favourite instrument is the 19 ounce cue with the linen-wrapped handle. 

4.  The two  books I have read every year since  I was about 19 are Augustine's Confessions and Brideshead Revisited.

5.  I proposed to (the now) Mrs. Felix over the phone.

6.  For the last 5 years, I have told on ongoing bedtime story to my kids - "The Adventures of Jemble and Pooka".

7.  I believe the Pinot Noir is the only red varietal fit to drink, and fit it is.

8.  I want to retire to Cairo.

 

my office for the last 2 weeks

I reluctantly return to the world of "civilization"

...after having spent a number of days in a log cabin, with only a canoe for transportation.   Hauling water in buckets  is good for the soul.  Who said "Civilization is a shipwreck, from which every man must swim for his life"?  I'm thinking it was Tertullian, but I could be entirely mistaken, and I'm not going to google it right now.

BREAKING!!!

The peas and beans are, that is.  Most of the plants have started to break through over the last two or three days.  The garden is starting to sprout quite nicely.  For the Edmonton climate, the backyard garden of the felix clan recommends

• Sungold Wax Bush beans - this variety is great for canning or for freezing;
• Sugar Ann Dwarf peas - great for fresh eating, and so good you can eat them whole, pods and all, right off the vine
• Royal Burgundy Bush beans - these are just cool, as they are a deep purple on the vine, but turn a dark green when cooked;  also excellent fresh

Apart from those, corn (Northern Sweet) and the pole peas (Arrow) are all coming through.  Someone keeps trampling down the spinach, though...

One of the things we like to do with our vegetable garden is regularly donate a quantity of fresh produce to the Edmonton Food Bank every season.  You can get a few harvests out of a domestic garden throughout our season, and fresh produce is sometimes a rare item at local food banks.  We also try to encourage our kids to cultivate a portion of the garden which they will then harvest and donate as well.  It's a small thing, but I hope it will cultivate in them a sense of doing for others.

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