This month I started teaching a theology class on “Kyivan Spirituality” here in the parish and at our seminary in New Jersey. They say that the best way to learn something is to teach it. Given how mundane (i.e. non-spiritual) I am, there has been a LOT of prep work involved. St. Theophan describes this […]
On Newsweek’s Religious Case for Gay Marriage
December 9, 2008 By
I warned my parishioners that the only thing that the Fathers spent more time preaching on than money was sex. I’m sure they rather I talked about their budgets! Advocacy Journalism – and Bible Study – at their Worst The December 15th (2008) edition of Newsweek contains an article by their Religion editor Lisa Miller […]
How many cars do we need?
November 29, 2008 By
Our economy continues to “correct” itself after decades of being artificially inflated by easy credit, poor saving habits, and superfluous spending. The government is attempting to ease the effects of this correction by replacing the suddenly prudent (i.e. risk-averse) credit market with its own. In this way, it forces more money into a system in […]
A Funny Thing about Memory and Analysis of Change
July 28, 2008 By
When I was working for the government, I got to spend a lot of time researching why objective analysis was so difficult. I am out of that business now, but it is neat to see that problems of analysis are not confined to the world of international/comparative politics. Even simple parish priests get to see […]
Taking Responsibility for Falling to Temptations
July 24, 2008 By
The American heritage is one of a strong work ethic and a deep sense of personal responsibility. These individual traits, together with civic engagement, are the cultural foundations of American prosperity. Originally, these traits sprang forth naturally from America’s Judeo-Christian roots. Max Weber and De Tocqueville both warned what would happen if these individual traits […]
Music and Science – missing the obvious point
July 22, 2008 By
My apologies if you were hoping to read more exciting thoughts on bureaucracy, elections, and tyranny, but I am going to take a few minutes to share some random thoughts on something more fundamental : music. There is much that could be said, but I want to focus for a moment on the questions of […]
Who is Pakistan and where can I meet him?
July 17, 2008 By
Our brains just don’t work well in certain situations. Unfortunately, the world is full of “those situations”. There is a wonderful literature out there on how our brains let us down when we do certain kinds of analysis (The Psychology of Intelligence by Richard Heuer remains the best, although ). Nassim Taleb (The Black Swan) […]
