Religion

After the recent horrific destruction by ISIS militants, Palmyra’s Temple of Bel may not be lost forever. Though the full extent of the damage to the ancient temple is unknown, many believe that it can be rebuilt. Reuters says: Satellite pictures taken after the 2,000-year-old temple was dynamited by the jihadi group, and other images broadcast since Syrian government forces retook the city on Sunday, show almost the entire structure collapsed in a heap of rubble.

A reader sends in two essays — one from 2014, the other from 2015 — talking about the wide divergence now in public law, particularly around religion. This is really important stuff, re: the future of religious liberty.

In the 2015 piece, Marc DiGirolami, the Catholic law professor, writes about the ideologization of legal scholarship. Excerpts:

A Jewish man who went rushing into to a synagogue in Paris dressed as a jihadist brandishing a Kalashnikov and shouting ‘Allahu Akbar’, has been arrested The 40-year-old man, who has been branded an idiot, said he pulled the stunt to ‘lighten the mood’ The incident happened on Thursday evening when members of the Habad Loubavitch synagogue in eastern Paris were celebrating the festival of Purim, an annual festival where people dress up.

I was reading to the kids the other night from Land of the Firebird: The Beauty of Old Russia, by Suzanne Massie. It’s a wonderfully written book. Here’s a passage that caught my eye. Christianity first came to Russia in 988, with the conversion of the Kievan Prince Vladimir to Orthodoxy. In this passage, Massie explains how the Slavs brought their own traditions into the forms handed to them from Byzantium:

It has been clear for a while that it’s not going to be possible to have a really productive debate about the Benedict Option until the book comes out next spring, and we have something concrete on the table to discuss, instead of a collection of blog posts. I don’t often respond to critiques of the Ben Op nowadays for that reason, but a friend sent me a couple of things he read online recently from distinguished critics, and I want to mention them here, briefly.

The Jesuit politics professor Fr. James Schall dismisses the Ben Op like this: