| " [A] predictably brilliant re-appraisal of the Roman world during the fourth to sixth centuries. . . . Through the Eye of a Needle is a vast book, but is remarkably readable. Brown " s intimate knowledge of Augustine and his times is presented with human empathy and a sense of the relevance of these long-ago events. . . . [T]he latter chapters of Through the Eye of a Needle contain much essential information about the establishment of Christian influence throughout Europe following Rome " s fall. . . . [A] wonderful book. " --Ed Voves, California Literary Review " Peter Brown, professor emeritus at Princeton University and the leading historian of late antiquity, has written a masterful study. . . . His book is characterized by lively prose, mastery of the primary sources and original languages, comprehensive use of changes in the study of antiquities (especially the " material culture " of archaeology), gorgeous plates, nearly 300 pages of bibliographic end material, and a number of important revisions to the standard historiography. " --Dan Clendenin, JourneywithJesus.net " Through the Eye of a Needle (Princeton University Press) is the crowning masterpiece of Peter Brown, the great historian who virtually invented late antiquity as a periodisation. The book " s theme might seem specialised: the evolution of attitudes towards wealth in the last century and a half of the Roman empire in the west, and the century that followed its collapse. In reality, like so many of Brown " s books, it gives us a world vivid with colour and alive with a symphony of voices. It is not only the most compassionate study of late antiquity in the west ever written, but also a profoundly subtle meditation on our own tempestuous relationship with money. " --Tom Holland, History Magazine " His sparkling prose, laced with humour and humanity, brings his subjects to life with an uncommon sympathy and feeling for their situation. " --Tim Whitmarsh, Guardian " Brown, in this masterful history, makes the writings of Augustine, Ambrose and Jerome more accessible to the average reader, and scholars will welcome the voluminous notes and index. " --Ray Saadi, Gumbo |
| Much the same thing happened in 19th century feminism, as voting rights for women overshadowed the more indefinite goals. Once the vote was won, in 1920, feminism went into suspended animation for fifty years. It was revived only by the reappearance of another practical goal. There are two other bad ideas from 70’s feminism, which combine to create a current situation that makes abortion seem indispensable. Think about it this way: abortion is the solution, so to speak, of the problem of pregnancy. But when, and why, did pregnancy become a problem? Throughout most of human history, pregnancy has been a blessing. New children were welcomed, because they built the strength of a family and became the support of a couple’s old age. New children mean new life; they mean both personal delight and growth of the tribe. But for some reason in the late 20th century pregnancy came to seem an unbearable burden. It became so unbearable that a fourth of the time it occurred women sought abortion to escape it. Was this because pregnancy had become dangerous to women’s health? Was the nation wracked by war or famine? No, America during this period was the wealthiest, healthiest, most secure and comfortable nation in history. Pregnancy became unbearable due to a twofold change in expectations about women’s behavior — two bad ideas. One was the idea that women should be promiscuous. The other was that women should place career above childrearing. Both ideas were promoted by the feminist movement, yet there is a profound irony: both ideas are stubbornly contrary to the average woman’s deepest inclinations. Both ideas, in fact, were adopted unchanged from the worldview of the folks feminists claimed to hate — male chauvinists. There is a pop-sociology concept called “imitating the oppressor,” which means that when a group struggles for a new identity it tends to adopt the values of whoever it perceives to be holding power. Thus, anything that looked “feminine” made feminists uncomfortable, because in the opinion of men it was weak. Why we should think that men were smarter than our mothers and grandmothers was never clear. Most of the time, we acted as if men were made only a little higher than pond scum. Yet we accepted unquestioningly that a man’s life was the ideal life. Everything about men seemed more serious, more important. We felt embarrassed at our soft arms, and betrayed by our soft emotions. Motherhood was a dangerous sidetrack, a self-indulgent hobby that could slow you down. That’s the way men saw it, and who were we to argue? Whatever men treated with contempt was contemptuous; whatever men valued was valuable. And what men valued most was success. |
| As the chronology after this Introduction indicates, the Orthodox-with the Jews, Muslims, and other traditional Christians-trace their beginnings back to the Patriarchs, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and then to Moses-if not before the Patriarchs to humankind’s prototypical parents, Adam and Eve. These stories are so well-known that they hardly bear repeating here. But it is worthwhile to point out that the Orthodox understand this “history” (not always history in the modern sense) as a chronicle of God’s revelations, not only to particular human beings, but to humankind in general. The revelations are infrequently, if ever, individual in the restrictive sense of the word, but are meant to guide all of humanity by ultimately forming a people (the People of God) that lives its community life in communion with the one self-revealing God. Further, for the Orthodox this revelation continued personally in Jesus Christ, the unique and preexistent Son of God and Lord, and personally as well in the revelation of the Holy Spirit. The Spirit and revelation are ongoing in the life of the Church-one God in three Persons. Indeed, the Orthodox faith described as the Church of the Resurrection of Jesus Christ and the life of the Holy Spirit is arguably more apropos than that of the Ecumenical Councils, since religious faith and experience are more meaningful and readily accessible to the average American than the difficult historical and theological questions of the conciliar period. Orthodox history, most simply put, is a retrospective view and present appreciation of the life of God’s Spirit embracing humanity. Probably the most striking historical witness of the Orthodox Church for modern Christians is its uninterrupted presence at the holy places described in the life of Jesus of Nazareth, the Apostle Paul, or the Bible generally. Further, the Orthodox may also be found speaking the descendant language(s) in which the words of the Bible were originally spoken and written-appreciating these words from within their own languages rather than from without. When Western Christians make pilgrimage to the Holy Land or look at the Church’s roots, they invariably meet the Orthodox firmly and permanently entrenched on these foundations-whether in the Church of the Resurrection (Holy Sepulcher), on the Ascension Mount, or in the ancient churches of Thessalonika or Athens. This history is intrinsically connected with classical Western history from Rome to Charlemagne, on to the Crusades, Renaissance, Reformation, and up to the present. Hierarchy and Administration |
| That cosmopolitanism has almost vanished. Considered less as Turkish citizens than as an outpost of Greece, the Rum have endured what the Ecumenical Federation of Constantinopolitans, a moderate group that meets with Turkish ministerial officials to solve Rum-minority issues, describes as “systematic discrimination and harassment”. The Cyprus conflict of the 1950s to the 1970s provoked violent, governmentsponsored anti-Rum riots and 2,000 Rum buildings, including churches, schools, hospitals and 24 monasteries – some of them over a thousand years old – were confiscated. Most were sold or demolished. Father Samuel’s family was forced to leave Turkey, so he studied for the priesthood in Greece. Without Turkish citizenship, he is forbidden by law from working here as a priest. Yet, no priests can train here. Without priests, the Church cannot function. And without priests, there is no pool from which to choose the next patriarch, who must also be born in Turkey. When the 73-year-old Bartholomew retires or dies, it may prove hard to find his successor. Metropolitan Elpidophoros Lambriniadis is tipped as a possible patriarch, but he had to be persuaded to return from abroad, do national service and regain his Turkish citizenship. In future the Church may not be so lucky. “Why shouldn’t they study in their homeland?” asks Panos Anagnostopoulos, who assists at the Athens-based Halki Theological School Graduates Association, of which his father is president. “Halki is protected by the 1923 Treaty of Lausanne, which the Turkish government – a democracy –has ignored.” I wonder how many Rum would want to study Orthodox theology, given that as few as 2,500 remain and their average age is 65. During the 1960s Panos Anagnostopoulos’s Rum primary school on Halki island had 60 pupils: since then, dwindling numbers have forced its closure, and throughout Turkey only 120 Greek-speakers remain in Rum-minority schools. Following the Istanbul riots of 1955, the Rum fled and others were deported. |
| Another point missed in the work is that scientists estimated the amount of RNA in the nose and throat of monkeys vaccinated not with a standard dose of 30 micrograms – this is exactly how much people get when they are vaccinated – but with an increased dose of 100 micrograms. Most likely, this is also due to the preclinical technique and the limited number of monkeys. There are few of them, not because BioNTech and Pfizer did not have enough money to buy a couple more animals, but because the number of monkeys involved in testing must be agreed in advance with various ethical committees and reduced to the strictly necessary minimum. However, even after vaccination with the standard dose, the antibody titers in the vaccinated monkeys were nine times higher than in average person who had covid (after the triple dose – 18 times), so it can be assumed that it also provides sufficient protection. Thus, we have pretty good data obtained on primates, which show that in the upper respiratory tract of those vaccinated who have caught SARS-CoV-2, the virus does not have time to multiply to concentrations sufficient to infect others, as the immune system trained by the vaccine destroys it earlier. Certainly , it is possible to imagine situations when an infected person, who had been vaccinated, can obviously infect another person. F or example, spouses can infect each other due to their close communication, but it is hardly necessary to talk about mass spread. What are ‘ Leak y’ Vaccines? Transmission of the virus to another person is always a matter of probability: the higher the concentration of the virus in the upper respiratory tract, the longer the contact time and the closer communication, the stronger is the probability . The so-called leaky vaccines do leave a chance for the pathogen to pass from vaccinated to non-immunized, and this effect must be taken into account when calculating vaccination strategies, estimating when herd immunity will start working, and the number of people to be vaccinated for it to form. The problem is that today there is no sustainable model that would allow assessing the contribution of leak y vaccines – different scientific groups offer different approaches. |
| What Else Causes Blood Clots Sinus thrombosis of the dura mater (the full name of the revealed pathology) is a long-known, albeit rare disorder. According to the calculations of specialists from the Paul Ehrlich Institute, in the absence of external factors during the period of vaccination with the drug from AstraZeneca one case should have been identified in the population, on average. In other words, this pathology was observed seven times more often than usual, which prompted scientists to suspect a connection with vaccination. Even so, sinus thrombosis of the dura mater remains an extremely unlikely event: more than 1.6 million people have received the AstraZeneca vaccine in Germany. The reasons why some people – by the way, mostly young ones – form blood clots in the vessels that drain blood from the brain are unclear. It is believed that a combination of several risk factors leads to this: a tendency to form thrombosis, including genetically determined ones, female gender, recent childbirth, taking hormonal drugs, some infections, or head injuries. Indirectly, the assumption of an individual predisposition to the development of this complication – whatever its cause – reinforces the fact that six out of seven patients were relatively young women (age 20 to 50). The seventh patient was a man and his symptoms were slightly different. Although, of course, it is impossible to draw statistically reliable conclusions on such a small sample. Other European countries, which suspended vaccination with the AstraZeneca vaccine until all the circumstances were clarified, did not specify which thrombotic pathologies aroused suspicions among specialists. Interestingly, thrombocytopenia of an unclear nature was also observed in the United States, where people are inoculated with mRNA vaccines. There, too, we are talking about isolated cases for tens of millions of injected doses. In general, a drop in the number of platelets as an extremely rare complication after vaccination has been known for a long time – it is characteristic of vaccination against measles-mumps-rubella, but the frequency of this pathology cannot be compared with the frequency of thrombocytopenias developing as a consequence of these infections themselves. |
| The real choice is not between HIV-AIDS or abortion on the one hand, and reproductive health and rights and sexual education on the other, but between life and death, good and evil, Christ and the antichrist (2). A choice is to be made, a choice that can only be personal, an engaging choice that has vital consequences for families, Russia and the whole world. What the West and the rest of the world really need is a holy Russia! What they really expect of Russia is that she be herself and give her specific and irreplaceable witness. In this particular kairos of history, such a choice is possible! ___________________ 1. Located at Ozerkovskaya naberezhnaya 22/24, office 318, Moscow 115184, Russia. See www.ranir.ru IPPF Russia’s youth centers in Moscow, Tula and Stavropol would receive an average of 100 visits from young people a day. In IPPF’s own words: “We seek to counteract opposition for the so-called ‘pro-life’ groups and the Russian Orthodox Church. We disseminate accurate information on the real reproductive needs of individuals in Russia, to national and local media.” 2. May non-Christian or non-believing participants understand that the use of a Christian language in this speech is due to a predominantly Orthodox audience. © Marguerite A. Peeters 2011 Tweet Donate Share Code for blog The Hidden Agenda of the Rights Approach Marguerite A. Peeters “The hidden agenda of the rights approach” is the title of my presentation. To understand this somewhat enigmatic title, let us go back in history, to 1989, when the end of Marxism-Leninism was proclaimed and the West celebrated the “end of ideologies”. Some even spoke of the “end of history”, ... Since you are here… …we do have a small request. More and more people visit Orthodoxy and the World website. However, resources for editorial are scarce. In comparison to some mass media, we do not make paid subscription. It is our deepest belief that preaching Christ for money is wrong. Having said that, Pravmir provides daily articles from an autonomous news service, weekly wall newspaper for churches, lectorium, photos, videos, hosting and servers. Editors and translators work together towards one goal: to make our four websites possible - Pravmir.ru, Neinvalid.ru, Matrony.ru and Pravmir.com. Therefore our request for help is understandable. |
| We do not perform molebens (supplicatory services), leaving that to our brethren among the married clergy, since there are plenty of churches nearby. We serve panikhidas (memorial services) only on Saturdays. We don’t do “services of need” apart from travelling to take Holy Communion to the sick. This is proper for a monastery. A second peculiarity of our typikon is that our brethren receive Holy Communion, on average, three or four times a week. This is the rule of St. Basil the Great. We arrived at this practice gradually, not all at once. We all have quite a few obediences: every priest and deacon has several of them. But as important as these obediences are, one cannot allow them imperceptibly to become the one thing needful, overshadowing what’s most important. Thus, in addressing the habitual monastery dilemma between obedience and the spiritual life (although obedience is also part of the spiritual life, but that is the topic for another conversation), we arrived at the conclusion, which we felt with all our souls, that continual Communion of the Holy Mysteries is essential given our life circumstances. Later we remembered the rule of St. Basil the Great and consulted Fr. John (Krestiankin). He blessed this liturgical life, although not immediately, and in time it has taken root. So now, I repeat, our priests, deacons, monks, and many novices—with the blessing of their spiritual father—receive Holy Communion three or four times a week. And some priests, who have a special blessing, do so daily. Archimandrite Tikhon (Shevkunov). Photo: V. Korniushin/Pravoslavie.ru This is not a mandatory rule for every single person, every single day. No, of course not. All sorts of things can happen: someone gets sick; various things come up… But the most important thing is that receiving Holy Communion becomes the paramount need of life, with the Liturgy becoming its main event—preparing for the Liturgy, the Liturgy itself, receiving the Holy Mysteries of Christ, preparation for, and the expectation of, receiving Holy Communion the next time. This is extremely focusing and very helpful in battling with our passions, our foolish habits, and our sins. |
| The availability level is average in another five regions: St. Petersburg, the Kemerovo, Kurgan, Belgorod, and Altai regions. The vaccine is low in availability in 14 regions. There is basically no opportunity to get vaccinated in 8 Russian regions, but they are registering people there. In 42 regions, there is no opportunity for people to get vaccinated if they are not in a risk group. In some regions, only people under 60 can get vaccinated. Some regions plan to start mass vaccination only in the first quarter of 2021. According to the researchers, it can be assumed that the official estimates of the total vaccination volume are formed mainly due to the vaccination of military personnel and other categories of people that are not part of the regional statistics. The total volume of statistics for regions is at the level of 100-200 thousand people (including 50 thousand people in Moscow as of January 1). At the same time, according to the official data of the Ministry of Health as of January 2, 800 thousand people were vaccinated in Russia. On January 17, the First Channel reported that 2 million people got vaccinated. Translated by Julia Frolova Tweet Donate Share Code for blog COVID-19 vaccine is in short supply across the country. How it is distributed among regions is unclear Taisia Sidorova Alexander Dragan, an independent analyst, talks about production statistics and problems Since you are here… …we do have a small request. More and more people visit Orthodoxy and the World website. However, resources for editorial are scarce. In comparison to some mass media, we do not make paid subscription. It is our deepest belief that preaching Christ for money is wrong. Having said that, Pravmir provides daily articles from an autonomous news service, weekly wall newspaper for churches, lectorium, photos, videos, hosting and servers. Editors and translators work together towards one goal: to make our four websites possible - Pravmir.ru, Neinvalid.ru, Matrony.ru and Pravmir.com. Therefore our request for help is understandable. |
| 25 See, e.g., Hooykaas, Religion and the Rise of Modern Science; and Jaki, The Savior of Science. These sources do not deal seriously with the impact of Christianity and Hellenistic science. There is, however, an underlying desire to shape the relationship between Christianity and science in an idealized way in which historical contingencies are disregarded. This makes the nature of these claims rather apologetic, which promotes a simplified view of Christianity as a stimulating force for scientific development. 27 See, e.g., Daniélou, Gospel Message and Hellenistic Culture; and Chadwick, Early Christian Thought and the Classical Tradition. 28 It was in this period, generally known as the Patristic period, that the fundamental Christian doctrines were fixed by the Fathers of the church in a series of church councils. The Patristic period as understood within Orthodox Christianity is often extended far beyond these “official” historical limits until at least the fourteenth century, the century of St. Gregory Palamas. In a sense, however, the Patristic era never ended: “In the eyes of Orthodoxy the ‘Age of the Fathers’ did not come to an end in the fifth century, for many later writers are also ‘Fathers.’… It is dangerous to look on ‘the Fathers’ as a closed circle of writings belonging wholly to the past, for might not our own age produce a new Basil or Athanasius?” T. Ware, The Orthodox Church, p. 212. 29 St. Gregory the Theologian (Nazianzus) Orations 28 [ET: NPNF, pp. 300 – 301]. It is interesting to note that the recent translation of the same oration instead of the word science uses the word knowledge, which probably reflects more accurately the usage of the terms related to the particular sciences in the time of St. Gregory. See F. W. Norris, Faith Gives Fullness to Reasoning, p. 242. 30 It is known that religion or theology is considered by some modern scientists as being irrelevant in any scientific context. Some of the educated public treat religion as giving important insights when it deals with some scientific beliefs in the field of biological evolution and cosmology. This feature of knowledge, its integrity and all-encompassing domain, is quite unpopular and even hostile to the modern understanding of sciences as strongly differentiated branches of research with quite narrow and strictly professional applications. Knowledge as a universal intellectual and cultural attitude to the world is not pursued now as part of the educational agenda in the average university. |
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