Poetry Event Tonight

THE THIRD ANNUAL
GREATER NEW YORK MENSA
OPEN MIKE
TRIBUTE TO NEW YORK IN POETRY
Wednesday, November 19, 2003
7:30 - 10:00 PM
BRING A POEM YOU WOULD LIKE TO SHARE
to
The General Society
Of Mechanics and Tradesmen
20 West 44th Street
(Just West of Fifth Avenue,
Two short blocks from Grand Central)
Near B, D, F, V, 4, 5, 6, 7 trains
1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 42, 104 buses

$5 members / $7.50 not yet members and guests.
For more information, please comment here.

Bush's Budget Betrayal

"Did anyone who voted for Bush think that he would far surpass Clinton in expanding the Leviathan state? In 1999, Harvard University economist Martin Feldstein ominously warned in a Wall Street Journal op-ed that unless President Clinton's budget plans were defeated by congressional Republicans, government spending would increase by $850 billion over the next decade, on top of the $2.5 trillion increase already called for in current law (much of which was off-budget spending).

"Little did Feldstein realize that as he wrote, an even more aggressive spender was preparing a bid for the White House under the banner of fiscal restraint and a more humble foreign policy but who, once elected, would make the reckless Clinton look like the model of probity with respect to domestic and foreign policies. Under the Bush Administration, the national debt will increase by more than $850 billion in two years."

Christopher Westley, here.

Of Course. Who else?

You are Martin Heidegger! Your reputation is
stained a bit by the fact that you were a
member of the Nazi party, but your
groundbreaking Being and Time is still
read by a whole lot of people. You overuse the
hyphen, and make up a lot of words. You died in
1976.


What 20th Century Theorist are you?
brought to you by Quizilla

An Evangelical View of Gay Marriage

"There is a middle way. We can make sure that long-term gay and lesbian partnerships are afforded legitimate legal protections in a pluralistic society without changing our long-standing and deeply rooted concept of marriage as being between a man and a woman. That should continue to be the theology of the church and the way our society best orders itself.

"But do we really want to deny a gay person's right to be at their loved one's deathbed in a hospital with "family restrictions"? Do we also want to deny that person a voice in the medical treatment of his or her partner? And do we really want all the worldly possessions of a deceased gay person to revert to the family who rejected them 30 years ago, instead of going to their partner of the last 20 years? There are fundamental issues of justice and fairness here that can be resolved without a paradigm shift in our basic definition of marriage. "

Jim Wallis, here.

An interesting take, and I think a humane one. There may be a place in theology for the idea of sacramental marriage as a man/woman thing without pretending that this has anything to do with the legal institutions of our secular state.

A Russian Who Challenged Orthodoxy

Instead of focusing on differences, Alexander [sic] Soloviev emphasized the faith Roman Catholics share with his fellow Russian Orthodox Christians: "Whatever is holy and sacred for us is also holy and sacred for them."

...

"During the last two decades of his life, Soloviev became deeply interested in Christian unity. In 1886 he submitted to a Croatian Catholic archbishop his own proposal for bringing the Russian Orthodox Church back into communion with Rome. The archbishop arranged an audience with Pope Leo XIII in the spring of 1888. At that audience, the Pope gave Soloviev the papal benediction for his efforts at reconciling the Russian Church to Catholic communion.

"In 1896, Soloviev made a profession of faith before an Eastern Catholic priest, and was received into Catholic communion. He did not regard this as abandoning his ties with the Russian Church, but rather as their fulfillment.

"There is an unsubstantiated report that he received last rites from a Russian Orthodox priest, which would have been permissible had there been no Catholic priest available. But to the end of his life Soloviev recognized the Pope as 'supreme judge in matters of religion.'"

Soloviev was the first of the modern Russian Catholics, or, as we sometimes like to put it, Russian Orthodox Christians in communion with Rome. If his ideal of the Pope as an ecclesiatical Tsar is one that many of us do not consider one of his strong points, it is one most Roman Catholics aren't all that comfortable with either.