The Church

The Church is more a hospital for sinners than a hotel for saints

Liberation theology

liberation theology is not originally a "grass-roots" movement among the poor. Instead, Ratzinger called it a creation of Western intellectuals and a form of "cultural imperialism" in reaction to the demise or near-demise of the "Marxist myth" in the West.

Schopenhauer on journalism

Exaggeration of every kind is as essential to journalism as it is to the dramatic art; for the object of journalism is to make events go as far as possible. Thus it is that all journalists are, in the very nature of their calling, alarmists; and this is their way of giving interest to what they write. Herein they are like little dogs; if anything stirs, they immediately set up a shrill bark.

Arthur Schopenhauer, On Some Forms of Literature (1851)

Rowan Williams

A … woolly-minded, wordy man of inconsistent and incoherent views presiding over a miserably divided church”.

Anglican rite

All Archbishops of Canterbury fail, quite simply because the Church of England isn’t a Church at all, it’s a theme park: you wander about and choose the rides you want to go on.

Bureaucracies

For bureaucrats procedure is everything and outcomes are nothing.

Fashions

It is little wonder that any fashion should grow popular by which idleness is favoured and imbecility assisted.

Modernity

The comedians of modernity [Nietzsche]

Bureaucracy

The distinctively American wrinkle: the Republic of Paperwork

Kierkegaard

“The matter is quite simple. The Bible is very easy to understand. But we Christians are a bunch of scheming swindlers. We pretend to be unable to understand it because we know very well that the minute we understand we are obliged to act accordingly. Take any words in the New Testament and forget everything except pledging yourself to act accordingly. My God, you will say, if I do that my whole life will be ruined. Herein lies the real place of Christian scholarship. Christian scholarship is the Church’s prodigious invention to defend itself against the Bible, to ensure that we can continue to be good Christians without the Bible coming too close. Dreadful it is to fall into the hands of the living God. Yes, it is even dreadful to be alone with the New Testament.”

Federal Reserve

The Fed is a patsy. It is a pathetic dependent of the big Wall Street banks, traders and hedge funds. Everything (it does) is designed to keep this rickety structure from unwinding.

Midgely on Dawkins

"The ideology Dawkins is selling is the worship of competition. It is projecting a Thatcherite take on economics on to evolution. It's not an impartial scientific view; it's a political drama."

St. Paul on bishops

St. Paul's letters to Bishop Timothy, specifically 2 Timothy 4.

... I solemnly urge you: proclaim the message; be persistent whether the time is favorable or unfavorable; convince, rebuke, and encourage, with the utmost patience in teaching. For the time is coming when people will not put up with sound doctrine, but having itching ears, they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own desires, and will turn away from listening to the truth and wander away to myths. As for you, always be sober, endure suffering, do the work of an evangelist, carry out your ministry fully.