Recently Pope Francis made a couple of affirmation in an impromptu press conference that made the headlines of all major news agencies. They deal with the very “hot” issue of the Christian view on homosexuality. In the context of the building pressure from the secular society, the recent development in the United States’ Supreme Court and the lawsuit against the Anglican Church that is coming up from a same sex couple in Britain, one can understand why the press was so eager to find out what the Pope had to say about it. The headlines wrote things like: Pope Francis: The end of ‘fortress Catholicism’, Pope’s gay tolerance no shock and so forth, implying that the Pope… Continue reading
The Bond That Keeps the Bricks of the Our New Church Together
Jesus said to him, You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like it, You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments hang all the Law and the Prophets.
(Mat 22:37-40)
St. John the Little, a disciple of St. Pachomious the Great, said once “Nobody builds his house from the roof down but from the foundation up”. Asked what he meant by this he said “our foundation is our neighbor; to him I should tend first, because on him hang all the commandments of Christ.” The essence of… Continue reading
Christian love and human eros on Valentine’s Day
Valentine’s Day is a big deal in America and I am not going to try to diminish that. Even though trying to trace back the roots of this tradition is a very convoluted task, at this point in time it really doesn’t matter to any one where it all started it doesn’t matter if the real St. Valentine existed or not, or if the romancing stories around him are truth or pure fiction, people celebrate it unconditionally. Out of this mess one thing is sure: if you fail to buy chocolate and/or flowers on this day you are toast… Continue reading
The Tiger and the Snow
I found this interesting article, although quite difficult to read in its entirety, about Roberto Benigni’s movie we watched last week. See bellow some excerpts. Full article here (not free however…)
“Robert Benigni’s most recent movie ‘La tigre e la neve’ (The tiger and the snow, 2005, Italy, available both in English and Italian) deserves the attention of the futurists not for its being able to indicate premises about the life modes of the next generations, but rather because of his intrinsic endeavor to emphasize that certain values prevail (or shall prevail) through out time and space. This two dimensional facet of interaction is present in ‘La tigre e la neve’. On the one hand… Continue reading