Victoria Blake puts forth some undeveloped thoughts:
Every year, our church throws a big “Reformation Bash” to celebrate the anniversary of the night that Martin Luther posted his 95 theses on the Wittenberg church door.
Many people—Protestants and Catholics—have wondered, why do you celebrate the Reformation? What I’ve heard from Protestants who are against celebrating the Reformation is the analogy, “That’s like celebrating the removal of a tumor.” I can only assume that the reason a Catholic would not appreciate a Reformation celebration is that they think the Reformation was the wrong thing to do and full of bad theology.
I want to make the case that the Reformation is something that should be celebrated.
First, I will address the Protestant concern. Historically, God’s people have marked big occurrences with festivals. Some of them were prescribed in the Bible, some of them were not. And of the ones in the Bible, some were prescribed directly by God and some were not. Passover was prescribed by God, Purim was not. Both were in the Bible. Hanukah is not prescribed in the Bible at all, but is celebrated by Jesus. The events in the 1500s were certainly as theologically significant as Purim and Hanukah, if not as significant as Passover.
The Catholic concern is harder to address, as it becomes more of a theological debate. But even Catholics have to admit that there were abuses of clerical power, such as the allowance of indulgences and corruption in offices, which needed to be called out and fixed. From their point of view, the reformers who became Protestants led to the counter-reformers who remained Catholic.
In either case, the important thing is that truth prevails. And since God so willed that truth prevail by the Reformation, we should celebrate that prevalence.
Ella Hansen writes: After a few days of illness, Susan is beginning to recover, but her animosity toward her brother Will’s old friend Qian Ang is unchanged, and her sister’s adoration of him has only made matters worse. Her grandmother Molly has noticed but has not yet pressed for explanation. / Prologue / Chapter I / Chapter II / Chapter IIIA / Chapter IIIB
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Who’s there?
Nay, answer me; stand, and unfold yourself.
Long live the king!
John Ahern, looking for trouble, writes,
I have been long confused by this idea of patriotism. There seem to be three reasons to be patriotic, which I have summarized here.
a) Be patriotic because your country is a country to be proud of. (Michelle Obama, you unpatriotic person.)
b) Be patriotic because your country’s heritage is a heritage to be proud of.
c) Be patriotic because you owe it to your country. Look at what it has given you. Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country.
Point out any more. I can think of three very good reasons to reject all three of these.
a) My country aborts unborn babies. You cannot be proud of a country that legalizes what you must, if you are consistent, believe to be murder.
b) My heritage, assuming it is one to be proud of, would inform me that patriotism is not a productive emotion to feel or doctrine to hold in a federalism. (e.g. A. V. Dicey, British theorist—one should feel a greater allegiance to one’s state than to one’s country in federalism.)
c) There is no doubt that I should honor the civil authorities and respect them, so long as they are my civil authorities. I am grateful for the protection they have given me. But my allegiance to the republic for which the flag stands I can not pledge in good conscience, because that republic is unjust. How can you give your allegiance to something that actively pursues injustice?
Is there some other reason I forgot to be patriotic?
In the summer of 2008, the Spanish parliament granted legal rights to apes, criminalizing their use in circuses or television commercials. The director of the “Great Apes Project” claims that “we are seeking to break the species barrier — we are just the point of the spear.” Such a claim is more than mildly disturbing. But equally disturbing, if not more so, are the many stories of the involuntary euthanasia of human beings who are simply sick or old. What has happened to our world? Apes are given rights, the “species barrier” is eroded, and humans are murdered in ever increasing numbers. Where will this end?
Laura Russell muses,
Sophocles’ play Philoctetes is a gripping piece: but exactly whose story does it tell? Identifying the protagonist in this complicated drama has proven a challenging task. In order to do so, I would like to first define the term “protagonist” in two subcatagories – abstract, and dramatic. These definitions clarify the roles of Philoctetes and Neoptolemus and supply a framework for the analysis of these roles. View Full Post
I sat down to write a true story I’ve had in my head nearly my whole life. Somehow, I ended up writing this instead:
I seem to have sent most of my life in sleepy little towns. Some are sleepier than others, of course, but there is still that indefinable air to them, something that makes them, and the thing that happen in them, the same. The people and the places differ in the little details, and yet it is these details which make them the same.
The hardware store in Monroe was just like any other hardware store. We didn’t know this as kids—we just liked it for its toy aisle full of farm toys, and the fact that it had enough interesting tools to keep us entertained for however long Dad was in there. And besides, the store held two great fascinations for me: a cat that lived there, and a lifesize cutout of the Maytag Man. View Full Post
Ella Hansen writes:
Because of an abundance of homework (Tuesday’s translation for the harder of my two Latin classes is four or five handwritten pages), the next chapter of In Enigmate is progressing very slowly; I do hope, however, to post it later this month. Until then, poetry must again suffice: this time, more recent.
***
Paronomasia
(Sept. 2009)
O poet, my friend, you are filled with conceit;
You think yourself finer and fleeter;
Until you have deigned, though, to go on your feet,
You never will travel a metre.
Regina Bertilson writes,
An essay I wrote recently for one of the classes I am taking, Critical Thinking through Film and Literature. It’s quite a fascinating class. My small group is doing a project on Up (the film, by Pixar, in case you can’t remember). Hopefully this’ll be interesting, and not just a cheatful easy way out of posting…
Critical thinking is what makes us who we are. It helps us process information and make decisions. If we use it effectively, it can change our opinions, and help us form our personal view of the world.
