Fr. Hans

Crisis in Indonesia

NEWS FROM THE ORTHODOX CHRISTIAN MISSION CENTER (OCMC)

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Crisis in Indonesia – March 19, 2007

The Metropolitanate of Hong Kong and Southeast Asia (Ecumenical Patriarchate) wishes to issue the following statement, concerning situations in Indonesia.

The Orthodox Christians in Indonesia have joined the list of those attacked by Muslim extremists. Father Methodios Sri Gunarjo, his family and other Orthodox were terrorized and threatened this past weekend. Although there are no reports of physical harm at this point, the verbal, psychological and other forms of abuse continue. At one point, a knife was put to the throat of Father Methodios, as his attackers demanded that he close the Churches in the Boyolali area of Central Java. It should be noted that there is a thriving ministry in this area.

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A Journey That Will Come Full Circle and End With a Ring

New York Times (free registration required) Sergei Kivrin March 21, 2007

Danilov Monastery bellsAt the Danilov Monastery in Moscow, Hierodeacon Roman, a bell ringer, may be able ring the tower’s original bells by next year.

MOSCOW, March 20 — The bells of Lowell House at Harvard — so much a part of the university’s tradition that they have their own society of bell ringers — will soon return to the Russian monastery from which they were sold more than 70 years ago.

The Russian Orthodox Church and the university announced a final agreement on Tuesday to move the bells next year to Danilov Monastery, the residence of the Russian patriarch, after a replacement set for Harvard is completed.

The bells have become a symbol for the resurgence of the Orthodox Church and its drive, much like Russia’s, to reclaim its former glory.

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A climate of fear

Ed. I said it two months ago: The global warming movement is really secular apocalypticism. IMO, the movement is best understood as a cultural rather than scientific movement. The scientific jargon only serves to lend it a veneer of authority and thus legitimacy.

The Age March 18, 2007

Apocalyptic talk about global warming has stirred the sediment of old fears – the mushroom cloud has returned to haunt us. But, Thornton McCamish writes, the last great fright was a little different from the new one.

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From a friend in Iraq

A friend of mine who served in Iraq sent this along:

Regardless of where you stand on the issue of the U.S. involvement in Iraq, here’s a sobering statistic: There has been a monthly average of 160,000 troops in the Iraq theatre of operations during the last 22 months, and a total of 2,112 deaths.

That gives a firearm death rate of 60 per 100,000 soldiers.

The firearm death rate in Washington D.C. is 80.6 per 100,000 persons for the same period. That means that you are about 25% more likely to be shot and killed in the U.S. Capital than you are in Iraq.

Conclusion: The U.S. should pull out of Washington.

Fix Bad Government with More Government?

Real Clear Politics Dennis Byrne March 10, 2007

The partisans who are scoring political points by gnashing their teeth over the outpatient failures at Walter Reed Army Medical Center are missing the point: The government did it.

It is especially aggravating because many of these same partisans want to turn the nation’s health care system over to…the government.

Or have they somehow missed the fact that the care of veterans is the responsibility of the government? Do they somehow believe that a single-payer health care system, or universal health care, or whatever else they want to call it will be immune to the kind of bureaucratic insensitivity, apathy and bungling that is integral to government?

Would the stampeding fault-finders please explain to the world how they would ensure that civilian outpatients, under a bureaucracy rivaling the military’s, would not be ignored in the same manner that the military bureaucracy abandoned the wounded veterans in Building 18? With hundreds of millions of civilian patients, instead of thousands of wounded veterans, would someone give us a clue how the government would keep track of them all? With outpatient veterans getting lost under mountains of paperwork and red tape, how would government be more responsive to the needs of hundreds of millions?

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College students think they’re so special

MSNBC February 27, 2007

Study finds alarming rise in narcissism, self-centeredness in ‘Generation Me’

NEW YORK – Today’s college students are more narcissistic and self-centered than their predecessors, according to a comprehensive new study by five psychologists who worry that the trend could be harmful to personal relationships and American society.

“We need to stop endlessly repeating ‘You’re special’ and having children repeat that back,” said the study’s lead author, Professor Jean Twenge of San Diego State University. “Kids are self-centered enough already.”

Twenge and her colleagues, in findings to be presented at a workshop Tuesday in San Diego on the generation gap, examined the responses of 16,475 college students nationwide who completed an evaluation called the Narcissistic Personality Inventory between 1982 and 2006.

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