It’s the West’s Fault
27 March 2007 - 9 ניסן 5767 by Huw
We can fix the Atheists. Really. We can. And that whole science and faith problem? It’s easy to see who to blame:
If we use Puhalo’s thesis, then I think we can blame the Catholic Church as the sole source of this problem. The Catholic Church, and the Protestants after them, tried to propagate their models of reality for known facts as namely eternal truth (dogma), and the Protestants at least still continue this by using scripture as a scientific textbook.
(I saw this posted in the Orthodoxy group on LiveJournal
Yep, that evil West. It is all their fault. One always needs a nice scapegoat to run the nice pogrom (a nice Russian word, also used by the Orthodox in Russia during the not-so-nice period of Jewish persecution).
As the New York Times published in 1903, “The anti-Jewish riots in Kishinev, Bessarabia (modern Moldova), are worse than the censor will permit to publish. There was a well laid-out plan for the general massacre of Jews on the day following the Orthodox Easter.”
In many circles, from Orthodox through femenist through fundamentalist Muslim, it has become quite de rigour in the past decades to blame “The West” for all the ills of society.
What’s funny is Puhalo’s rejuvenation by association: when he was an Episcopi Vagantes (or really, whatever is the singular of that Latin hrase) he was generally regarded as a nutcase by canonical sorts.
Now - just cuz he’s canonical - he’s ok: even the old stuff. That’s the apostolic succession for you.
A totally off-topic “one thing” about pogroms: Russia hasn’t it’s act together enough to pull such off. For all I might lament the near-fascist attitude towards gays or the history of Anti-Semitism or even the Gov’t actions in Beslan, the truth is it’s not organisation that’s letting this happen: it’s disorganisation.
*sigh*. Well, I suppose I should take heart in the fact that an Orthodox member of the orthodoxy lj community took the time to point out the errors in the article. Sad to say most anti-Western comments of that sort are often ignored (and sometimes implicitly affirmed) by Orthodox in that particular lj group. A few months ago one member posted an article claiming that corporal punishment could be traced back to the medieval Roman Catholic Church, when Catholic priests began to spank women after confession. Seriously! And no one said a word about that preposterous claim, including the many learned priests and deacons who are in that community. I generally refrain from commenting there since I’m Catholic and I’m mostly there to learn, but I had to say something in that case.