A Conversion that Shook the World

The feast of the conversion of St. Paul (January 25), one time persecutor of Christians, later Apostle to the Gentiles. How apt that this feast dedicated to the Apostle to the Gentiles should be celebrated exactly a month to the day after the feast of the Nativity of Our Lord! The one initiates our salvation, the other initiates the proclamation of this mystery beyond the the confines of the Jewish world.

A Pope After My Own Heart!

Viva il Papa!!!

From: http://all2common.classicalanglican.net/

"And now for something completely different"-Eric Voegelin

This man saved my sanity (and so did Edmund Burke)! I first read his essays (compiled in book form titled Science, Politics and Gnosticism) as a first year M.A. student at CSULA. I came to understand how radical politics and the revolutionary impulse, beginning with the French Revolution, has within it this Gnostic drive to "immanentize the Christian eschaton," i.e. bring down the transcendent kingdom of God by transcending human nature and consciousness. Voegelin sums it up this way: "The gnostic's soul (psyche) belongs to the order of the world. His spirit (pneuma) impels him toward deliverance. The task, pursued in many different ways, is the destruction of the old world (which means dissolving the soul) and passage to the new world (which requires strengthening the powers of the spirit). The instrument of salvation is knowledge (gnosis) by which the soul is disentangled from the world."

Here is a great and useful outline from the book Science, Politics and Gnosticism. Hopefully it will whet your appetite:

">http://home.salamander.com/~wmcclain/ev-spg.html

Muslims in Europe

If you've wondered what the actual census figures are, here is the link to the BBC news site:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/4385768.stm

Fr. Felix Varela, Humble Priest, Philosopher, and Cuban Patriot

http://www.serraus.org/news_&_events/serra_usa/usa_v4_num1_mar04/v4_num1_pg6.htm

Muslim "Barbie"?

From http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/4605334.stm:

Barbie loses out to veiled rival

The Fulla doll is designed to appeal to a Muslim market.
Step aside Barbie - a veiled doll with, as her creator describes it "Muslim values", is proving a popular choice in Egypt's toy stores.
Fulla, dressed in a traditional Islamic headscarf and overdress, comes with her own pink felt prayer rug.
Some parents who would not want to buy Barbies for their daughters are choosing to give them Fullas instead.
Creators NewBoy Design Studio launched the doll in 2003 and sales have proved strong in the Middle East.
Fawaz Abidin, the Fulla brand manager, said: "You have to create a character that parents and children will want to relate to.
"She's honest, loving and caring, and she respects her father and mother."
Career woman
Fulla is still single and there are no plans for an Islamic equivalent to Ken, Barbie's former boyfriend. However, a Doctor Fulla and Fulla as a teacher are planned - both respected careers for women.

Fulla is believed to be the best-selling girls' toy in the Arab world
Her extensive wardrobe has been modernised for the Egyptian market to include jeans and the type of colourful headscarves worn by many young women.
Tarek Mohammed, chief salesman at Toys'r'Us in Cairo, said: "Fulla sells better because she is closer to our Arab values - she never reveals a leg or an arm."
The surge in sales of Muslim girls' toys, including the veiled Fulla, comes amid new enthusiasm among Muslim women for wearing the veil.

My reflection:
As worrisome as many in the West (both cultural conservatives and liberals) might see this in terms of the prevailing cultural trends and attitudes in Egypt, and what that might mean for Christians and other religious minorities (and the fears are justifiable, given the plight of many Coptic Orthodox Christians), there is another side to this picture, and one cultural conservatives cannot ignore. It all boils down to this: if all the West has to offer Islamic culture is Paris Hilton, then their rejection of modern "western values" will be more than justifiable.

Former Cuban Revolutionary Officer Sees need for Change in Cuba

From cubanet.org:


FROM CUBA"The situation must change," says former military officer
Havana, Cuba. January (Jorge Olivera Castillo/www.cubanet.org) - "The situation must change," said a former military officer referring to the country's political and economic situations. "Otherwise, we must prepare for a violent end."
The former officer, who didn't want his name used, is now 70 and drives a taxi to make ends meet. Although he doesn't have the required licenses, he said his credentials as a retired member of the Revolutionary Armed Forces still have some clout and allow him to evade the occasional fine and possible confiscation of his automobile for using it in an illegal enterprise.
The former military, who said he had participated with Cuban forces in conflicts abroad, expressed disappointment. "I thought my old age would be different, but I was wrong. The dreams have become nightmares," he said.
"The revolutionary process has been a failure," he said. "Almost half a century thrown overboard. I think I realized it too late."

Book Review: O. Leamann's and H. Nasr's History of Islamic Philosophy

Here is a book I reviewed for the Spring '05 issue of Philosophia Christi:

Hossein Nasr, Seyyed, and Leaman, Oliver, ed. History of Islamic Philosophy (Routledge History of World Philosophies) London and New York: Routledge 2001

Review by Robert Llizo

Scholars and students familiar with Oliver Leaman’s work on medieval Islamic and Jewish philosophy will be pleased with this edited collection of essays on the subject of Islamic philosophy. Co-edited with Seyyed Hossein Nasr, it offers a breathtaking overview of the history of Islamic philosophy with detailed discussions by leading scholars in the field concerning the various movements that have given it shape, from its Qur’anic inspiration to the diversity of contemporary expressions in the modern world.

Before a comprehensive discussion about Islamic philosophy can be undertaken with any amount of fruitfulness, we must arrive at an understanding of what, exactly, is meant by Islamic philosophy. The two opening essays by the editors, Nasr and Leaman, attempt to do just that

Oliver Leaman’ introductory essay points out the difficulty of identifying Islamic philosophy. It cannot be limited to philosophy written in Arabic and produced in Arabic lands, since “many of our thinkers did not write in Arabic, and many of them were not Arabs.” (p. 1) Nor, indeed, were some of them Islamic, since some Christians and Jews worked within the style of Islamic philosophy. Some philosophical work is included in these essays that have no bearing on religious belief, such as works on logic and grammar. (pp. 1-2) As Leaman shows, “It is possible to derive some religious implications from such work, if one tries very hard, but not usually very fruitfully.” (p. 2)

On the other hand, some works included are not “clearly philosophy,” recounting different schools of theological discourse. Since theology is foundational to the development of Islamic philosophy, this makes sense. But we are left with the same question: What, exactly, is so Islamic about Islamic philosophy? One way to answer this question is by defining it as philosophy produced within the context of Islamic society and culture.

But there is another side to this. Since theology makes up a rather substantial part of the philosophical experience in this Islamic context, such philosophy will have to take into account Qur’anic dogma. For instance, an Islamic philosopher cannot very well adopt the identical view of the origin of the universe as Aristotle, since the Qur’an clearly teaches that the universe has a clearly defined beginning and end. Thus, “(m)any Islamic philosophers produced modifications of the Aristotelian theory which made it compatible, or apparently compatible, with their understanding of the Qur’an, while others criticized the certainty which philosophers applied to Aristotle’s theory.” (pp.8-9)

This leads to another key question Leamann poses in this first of a long series of essays: “How creative were the Islamic philosophers?” (p. 9) While they did not work from any sort of tabula rasa, they were very creative in that they carried the concepts and ideas of their Greek intellectual forebears “to their fullest extent.” (p. 9) This underscores a major current that runs through all these essays by leading scholars in the field-that Islamic philosophy is not a static phenomenon, merely parroting classical schools of thought, but has in fact shown a remarkable ability to come up with original questions and answers to tough philosophical problems. This is the subject of the second introductory essay, by Seyyed Hossein Nasr.

Nasr’s essay deals directly with the two major “embodiments” of Islamic philosophy: the Persian (and adjacent areas from Iraq to India), and the Arabic, where “philosophy was to have a shorter intellectual life as an independent perspective than in Persia”, due to the triumph of Kallam on the one hand and of doctrinal Sufism on the other. (11-12) Here philosophy (or falsafah) had a marginal influence, given the dominance of kallam (or speculative theology) and usul al-fiqh (sources and foundations of Islamic jurisprudence). The Persian embodiment “had a continuous history going back to the earliest Islamic centuries and based not only on written texts but also on an oral tradition transmitted from master to disciple over numerous generations.” (11) Thus, Islamic philosophy, as a continuous historical enterprise, is primarily a Persian undertaking, having ceased for the most part in the Arab world west of Iraq. It is the Arabic branch, ironically, that gets much of the attention in the West because of Ibn Rushd (Averroes), and he (along with the Persian Ibn Sinna, aka Avicenna) gets lumped into that amorphous category known as “Arabian philosophy.”

The development of the discipline “history of philosophy” in Germany in the nineteenth century revived interest in Islamic philosophy, but only as a philological and historical study, not a philosophical one (p. 13). Three generations of Islamic scholars have learned much of their philosophy from these western sources, producing works on Islamic philosophy which purport to be “from the Islamic point of view but in reality reflect works of western scholars which they try to accommodate to their own situation.” (p. 13) In this putative Islamic context, philosophy is taught in the manner of the German school. Here Nasr cites the example of Shah Waliullah of India, whose school in Delhi still uses T.J. De Boer’s History of the Islamic Peoples, a work which claims that Islamic philosophy came to an end after Averroes (13). It is clear that Nasr, like Leaman, sees Islamic philosophy as a living tradition, and the arrangement of essays into topical groupings that span 1300 years of Islamic history argues forcefully for this.

Within this scope readers will be especially fascinated with Islamic philosophy’s interaction with the Christian world. Of interest to readers of this journal (and especially to medievalists) will be John Marenbon’s essay “Medieval Christian and Jewish Europe,” where he touches upon the prominence of Islamic Aristotelians such as Ibn Sinna in western Christendom from the twelfth to the sixteenth centuries. Siger of Brabant’s “Latin Averroism” is treated as a possibly “incorrect interpretation” of Averroes’ doctrine of the “threefold truth,” a “development” that “was determined not so much by his (Averroes’) philosophy as by the internal tensions of thought in the Christian universities” (p. 1007) Maimonides had a rather large, though not quite extensive, influence on St. Thomas Aquinas, which, according to Marenbon, was “far stronger, far less transformed by St. Thomas’ own thoughts.” (p. 1007) Also of interest is the essay by F.E. Peters on the Greek and Syriac background and modes of transmission of classical texts (though he does overstate the “direct, without break” transmission between the classical pagan era and the Islamic, with a passing thought to the Greek and Syriac Christian contributions). A section of essays titled “The Jewish philosophical tradition in the Islamic cultural world,” with essays on Maimonides, Ibn Gabirol, Judah Ha Levi and Gersonides, details the Jewish contribution to Islamic philosophy. Section VII (Philosophy and its parts) has a collection of essays ranging from metaphysics, logic and epistemology to political philosophy and ethics, mostly dealing with medieval Islamic reflections on these subjects but continuing to engage masters and students in current day madrassas. Current trends in Islamic philosophy are dealt with, including its interaction with modern western philosophy (Kantianism, etc.) in Catherine Wilson’s essay “Modern Western Philosophy.”

Whether one is a specialist, a student or a missionary wishing to delve more deeply into the cultural and intellectual waters of the Islamic world for the purpose of ministering more effectively to Muslims, this big tome (1211 pages) is a good one-stop source on contemporary scholarship on Islamic philosophy. It includes a note on transliteration and style, helpful notes on Arabic characters and their pronunciation, end-notes at the end of each essay, two bibliographies by Oliver Leaman (one a helpful bibliographical essay, the other an extensive list of introductory texts), and name and subject indices. Professors Nasr and Leaman have done the scholarly community a great service in bringing together this fine collection of essays.

Dutch Rethink Liberal Drug Policies

From bbcnews.com:


Dutch cannabis policy challenged
The Dutch have long been famous for their tolerant attitude to cannabis.
But now they are re-examining their approach, because millions of European "drugs tourists" are heading to the Netherlands to do what they cannot do at home, the BBC's Mike Donkin reports.

Mayor Leers: Drive to decriminalise cannabis tradeThe quaint streets of Maastricht are a top attraction for tourists - especially, these days, "drugs tourists".
They flood in across the border from Germany and Belgium, along with the international criminal gangs who operate the drug supply lines.
Maastricht's citizens want an end to this, the city's Mayor Gerd Leers says. So he has called for the Dutch and the rest of Europe to adopt a common "pragmatic approach" to soft drugs.
Mayor Leers has told the Dutch parliament that the licensing system that allows coffee shops to sell 5g of cannabis to each customer should be extended, to allow them to grow their own plants.
"They should have a permit to grow their own cannabis so that they can cut their ties with the criminals," the mayor says. "That way we can control things. At the moment our system is so hypocritical."
'Back-door problem'
Jaap Louwerier, owner of The Fantaisie in Amsterdam, agrees with that. His coffee shop is popular with customers who come to the city for the weekend from France, Britain, Ireland and elsewhere to buy cannabis. "This is all quite legal," he says.

The Dutch have seen a boom in illegal cannabis plantations"But it is illegal for me to buy the bigger and bigger stocks of cannabis I need to supply these smokers. And the law says I can only keep up to 500 grammes on my premises, which is not enough. In the coffee shops we call this the 'back-door problem'."
In a dim corridor behind the shop, he covertly buys a stash of cannabis from a supplier, while keeping an eye on the door.
"If the police came in now they would confiscate all this," he says. "That's happened once already, and if it happened three times, I'd lose my licence."
Illegal plantations have sprung up across the Netherlands to supply the coffee shops - in outhouses, basements and attics.
What are these secret gardens like? In one old apartment, a bedroom floor is covered with plastic sheeting and earth, and orange lights provide artificial sunlight above a mini-forest of lush green plants.

For the rest of the story: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/4595018.stm

My reflection:

The Netherlands get many European and American tourists. Unfortunately, they're not all flocking to Rotterdam to see the home and stomping grounds of that scion of Renaissance Humanism, Erasmus. They're not even interested in going to Amsterdam to experiance the sights and smells that inpired Rembrandt's keen portraits of everyday life. No, they are interested in smells of a different kind-cannibis. Amsterdam is also known as the launch-off point of the notorious "sex tours" to Thailand, where under-age girls (usually kidnapped or lured from nearby Cambodia or Vietnam with promises of lucrative employment) are forced to perform sexually for these "tourists." When a nation becomes better known for its hedonistic ways than its glorious cultural contribution to the the world, you know there's a problem. Many Dutch citizens are waking up to that fact, but it may be too late to do anything about it. But then again, maybe not.

Christian Democratic MP Cisca Joldersma is leading a brave fight to put limits on the drug trade in the Netherlands, and perhaps to work towards a tougher European policy on drug trafficking. I wish her well. Her fight e Netherlands, and much of European culture, for that matter, with a sober sense of classical Christian virtues is an uphill battle, to be sure, but the long history of Christianity in these lands assures us that the darkness might reign for a season, but it cannot reign for long.

I'm reminded of a passage in The Two Towers where Frodo and Sam, approach Mordor, andits darkness gets thicker, a brief vision of a star in the heavens reassures Sam, reminding him that the darkness of Mordor might triumph for a time, but not for long. Here was something the darkness could not touch. In another revelaing scene, we see our two brave Hobbits receive an even greater insight:
“Standing there for a moment filled with dread Frodo became aware that a light was shining; he saw it glowing on Sam’s face beside him. Turning towards it, he saw, beyond an arch of boughs, the road to Osgiliath running almost as straight as a stretched ribbon down, down, into the West. There, far away, beyond sad Gondor now overwhelmed in shade, the Sun was sinking, finding at last the hem of the great slow-rolling pall of cloud, and falling in an ominous fire towards the yet unsullied Sea. The brief glow fell upon a huge sitting figure, still and solemn as the great stone kings of Argonath. The years had gnawed it, and violent hands had maimed it. Its head was gone, and in its place was set in mockery a round rough-hewn stone, rudely painted by savage hands in the likeness of a grinning face with one large red eye in the midst of its forehead. Upon its knees and mighty chair, and all about the pedestal, were idle scrawls mixed with the foul symbols that the maggot-folk of Mordor used.“Suddenly, caught by the level beams, Frodo saw the old king’s head: it was lying rolled away by the roadside. ‘Look, Sam!’ he cried, startled into speech. ‘Look! The king has got a crown again!’“The eyes were hollow and the carven beard was broken, but about the high stern forehead there was coronal of silver and gold. A trailing plant with flowers like small white stars had bound itself across the brows as if in reverence for the fallen king, and in the crevices of this stony hair, yellow stonecrop gleamed.“‘They cannot conquer for ever!’ said Frodo."

No, the darkness cannot reign forever, and with the likes of Parliamentarians like Ciska Joldersma, Popes like Benedict XVI, Bishops like Hilarion Alfeyev, and the European Christian Everyman who yearns and prays for the redemption of his land, Europe may very well regain its cultural crown.

Reflections on Christmas and Epiphanytides

For Christmas:

Almighty God, who hast given us thy only-begotten Son to take our nature upon him, and as at this time to be born of a pure Virgin; Grant that we being regenerate, and made thy children by adoption and grace, may daily be renewed by thy Holy Spirit; through our Lord Jesus Christ, who liveth and reigneth with thee and the same Spirit, ever one God, world without end. Amen
Collect for First Sunday in Christmastide

Today the Virgin giveth birth to Him who is beyond being, and the earth offereth a cave to Him who is unapproachable; angels doxologise with shepherds, and Magi journey with a star; for a young Child, the pre-eternal god is born for our sake. St. Romanos the Melodist

For Epiphany (Theophany):

O God,who by the leading of a star didst manifest Thine Only-Begotten Son to the Gentiles:mercifully grant that we, who know Thee now by faith,may at last behold Thy glory face to face; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen
Collect for Epiphany, January 6

When Thou, O Lord wast baptized in the Jordan,The worship of the Trinity was made manifest.For the voice of the Father bore witness to Thee,And called Thee His beloved Son.And the Spirit in the form of a dove,Confirmed the truthfulness of His Word.O Christ, our God, who hast revealed Thyself,And hast enlightened the world, glory to Thee!
Troparion for the Feast of Theophany

It is my heartfelt hope that you have had a most blessed Christmas season, and a happy and blessed Epiphany (Theophany) celebration. Christus regnat! Christus imperat!