Tag: christianity

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The giant Trauma

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The German Peasants’ War was the greatest popular uprising in Western Europe before the 1789 French Revolution. In 1524 and 1525, it swept across Germany with astonishing speed as thousands of people massed in armed bands to demand a new and more egalitarian order. The peasants took control of vast areas of southern and middle Germany, torching and plundering the monasteries, convents, and castles that stood in their way. But they would prove no match for the forces of the lords, who put down the revolt by slaying somewhere between seventy and a hundred thousand peasants in just over two … Continue reading The giant Trauma

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The Culture of encounter

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Hope is the first autobiography in history ever to be published by a Pope. Pope Francis, the first Latin American and the first Jesuit to head the Catholic Church, goes where no pontiffs have not dared, originally intended this book to appear only after his death, but the needs of our times and the 2025 Jubilee Year of Hope have moved him to make this precious legacy available now. Written over six years, this complete autobiography starts in the early years of the twentieth century, with Pope Francis’s Italian roots and his ancestors’ courageous migration to Latin America, continuing through … Continue reading The Culture of encounter

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How can be broaden our minds

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Academic philosopher, Simon Critchley explores why Mysticism is about existential ecstasy – an experience of heightening one’s senses and self into a sheer feeling of aliveness and provides a fascinating overview of Christianity’s great outliers. Mystical experiences offers us a practical way to open out thoughts and deepen the sense of our lives, whether through a mainstream connection to God or by taking part in mind-altering experiences. Whether so-called “mystical” experiences are felt to be religious, spiritual aesthetic or something else, people have been trying to report, describe, and make sense of this strange kind of ecstasy for a thousand … Continue reading How can be broaden our minds

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Humanity’s deepest desires, fears and hopes

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MacCulloch notes that for the vast majority of people throughout this history, marriage was a “contract between two men” that is between two fathers. And  that “When church weddings did start appearing, patchily, in the fourth century, the Church did not offer them to all the faithful”. Three categories of marriage emerged: the “Glorious ( imperial elite) , the “middle” ( imperial officers), and the “vile” (everyone else), with the vast majority of unions in the last category having no involvement from the Church at all. He rebukes contemporary Christians for asserting that there is a “Christian understanding of marriage” … Continue reading Humanity’s deepest desires, fears and hopes