Russian Patriarch Calls for Unity in Pascha Address

Truly remarkable:

Moscow (AsiaNews) – Proclaiming the traditional ‘Christos Voskrese!’ (Christ has risen) and the response of the faithful ‘Voistinu voskrese’ (Truly he has risen), Patriarch Kirill invited Russian Orthodox attending Easter ceremonies in the Cathedral Christ the Savoir in Moscow to change their lives “in agreement with this great hope” that is the Resurrection. “Rejecting what belongs to darkness, what does not belong to Christianity: evil, hatred, envy”. Orthodox Easter this year coincided with the Catholic Easter and on the eve of the festival, the Patriarch sent a message to the Pope and Protestant leaders calling for “common witness to the truth of God … to profess peace, justice and love.” 

Read the rest: 
http://www.asianews.it/news-en/Patriarch-Kirill,-Easter-in-Moscow,-with-messages-to-the-Pope-and-Protestants-21389.html

Read Full Post »

View the Mt Athos Special

If anyone else doesn’t have network TV, or otherwise missed it, St Elias Church’s blog has a link where you can view the 60 Minutes special on Mt Athos, which aired on Easter Sunday:

http://sainteliaschurch.blogspot.com/2011/04/links-to-monks-of-mount-athos.html

Read Full Post »

Ortho-Geekyness

From Pithless thoughts (
http://pithlessthoughts.blogspot.com/
)

Read Full Post »

Well Why Not? He’s Always Been Wrong About Everything

Bill Kristol endorses Obomber’s foreign policy:

http://dailycaller.com/2011/03/30/bill-kristol-declares-obama-a-born-again-neo-con-days-after-consulting-with-him-on-libya-policy/

Read Full Post »

Bright Week: Suddenly Spring

I had looked forward to this past Lent and Pascha for some time. For one thing, for the second year in a row the Catholic (and Protestant) calendars were in sync with the Orthodox (well, most of them; the old calendarists march to their own drum).

Secondly, Pascha last year was so early that the whole of Lent felt like winter. Almost a month later this year, I figured that Lenten austerity would be offset by warmth and flowers.

Alas, this was not to be. After what proved to be a harsh winter Spring was very slow in coming this year; it was the coldest, snowiest, rainiest and darkest March and April I remember. The occasional Spring day was followed by a week of cold and grey.

I am not one who thinks the only fine weather is bright and sunny. I work outdoors and generally like all kinds of weather. I particularly love rain. But even the most weather-tolerant of us were wearing thin by Holy Week. Daffodils and jonquils bloomed all right, but they looked like they immediately regretted it. I saw some hanging their heads under a couple inches of snow, like they were saying to themselves “What was I thinking?” At least the cardinals did their part, singing in the treetops no matter how wintry the day.

Holy Week brought more of the same, cold and grey and rainy.

Then it was Pascha. And on Monday of  Bright Week it seemed suddenly Spring. The grass looked greener and lush, and the leaves were opening on the trees, some of which were blooming.  It was raining, as usual, but this seemed a fair Spring rain.

At last, Creation seemed to say, the Resurrection is here, let us rejoice! Christ is Risen! Indeed He is Risen!

Read Full Post »

The Real American Exceptionalism (I)

Read Full Post »

Ayn Rand: The Ethics of Antichrist, Part III

So what, and who, was Ayn Rand for and against? The best way to get to the bottom of it is to take a look at how she developed the superhero of her novel, Atlas Shrugged, John Galt. Back in the late 1920s, as Ayn Rand was working out her philosophy, she became enthralled by a real-life American serial killer, William Edward Hickman, whose gruesome, sadistic dismemberment of 12-year-old girl named Marion Parker in 1927 shocked the nation. Rand filled her early notebooks with worshipful praise of Hickman. According to biographer Jennifer Burns, author of Goddess of the Market, Rand was so smitten by Hickman that she modeled her first literary creation — Danny Renahan, the protagonist of her unfinished first novel, The Little Street — on him.

What did Rand admire so much about Hickman? His sociopathic qualities: “Other people do not exist for him, and he does not see why they should,” she wrote, gushing that Hickman had “no regard whatsoever for all that society holds sacred, and with a consciousness all his own. He has the true, innate psychology of a Superman. He can never realize and feel ‘other people.’”

This echoes almost word for word Rand’s later description of her character Howard Roark, the hero of her novel The Fountainhead: “He was born without the ability to consider others.”

Read the rest here: 
http://exiledonline.com/atlas-shrieked-why-ayn-rands-right-wing-followers-are-scarier-than-the-manson-family-and-the-gruesome-story-of-the-serial-killer-who-stole-ayn-rands-heart/

Then watch this: 

Read Full Post »