Posted on 11/13/2009 10:31:42 AM PST by mojito
What was once venerated is now, in many ways, dismissed and even despised.
Matthew Arnold, the great Victorian poet, marked the turning moment. He had early intimations of the way we live now, a way largely evacuated of its Christian allegiances, certainly in the public sphere evacuated of the regard and respect that the profession of Christianity once automatically evoked.
The Sea of Faith/ Was once, too, at the full, he wrote, before going on in lines of immense power to record:
But now I only hear
Its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar,
Retreating, to the breath
Of the night-wind, down the vast edges drear
And naked shingles of the world.
Arnold was more than a bit of a prophet. Blasted by the great cold winds of secularism and scientism, faith in the old sense, faith in Christianity in once or so-called Christian countries, is not only in decline and defensive. Faith is, at the public level, being actively pushed away, visited with dismissive scorn. At the same time, ideas, attitudes and positions that have never been seen under the rubric of faith increasingly seek the protections of sanctified belief.
What else to make of a human-rights ruling (no, not from one of our own restless engines of pseudo equity) from the European Court this week. According to this ruling, the crucifixes that hang in most Italian classrooms violate religious and educational freedoms. Yes, the cross in the Catholic country violates religious and educational freedoms.
(Excerpt) Read more at theglobeandmail.com ...
Fasttrack this.
I will NOT submit to the Goron’s religious teachings and cannot be made to pay indulgences to another man’s faith.
Look at that headline CO.
I’m only one day ahead of the news — but I was ahead of it. 8)
Perhaps the only thing that keeps deep ecologists from being sued successfully is that they dont have an office or a bank account.
That no longer applies; but now they own the courts or the laws?
Well, the office is the UN and the bank account is the IMF, so in a way... but they still can't be sued.
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