By Rod Benson (published in APBF Digest, June 2015) When he chose “Francis” for his papal name in 2014, in honour of St Francis of Assisi, we might have expected former Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio to make a significant contribution to the Catholic Church’s witness on environmental issues. With the Encyclical released on June 18, …
Some fairy tales may be 6,000 years old
A scene from a classic edition of Jack and the Beanstalk. “Fairy tales are transmitted through language, and the shoots and branches of the Indo-European language tree are well-defined, so the scientists could trace a tale’s history back up the tree—and thus back in time. If both Slavic languages and Celtic languages had a version …
Mindfulness as a symptom
Reducing suffering is a noble aim and it should be encouraged. But to do this effectively, teachers of mindfulness need to acknowledge that personal stress also has societal causes. By failing to address collective suffering, and systemic change that might remove it, they rob mindfulness of its real revolutionary potential, reducing it to something banal …
A first essay on a first essay
On the table beside me lies an essay. Age spots on the smooth ivory surface, the faded red ink of a date stamp, and the tell-tale black marks impressed on paper by the typebars of an old manual typewriter indicate originality. In the upper left corner, staples stitch the leaves, and every second surface bears …
Origin of the phrase, ‘In necessariis unitas’
Like me, you've probably heard some variation of the phrase, "In essentials, unity; in non-essentials, liberty; in all things, charity." It's a translation of the Latin phrase, "In necessariis unitas, in dubitas libertas, in omnibus caritas." Nineteenth-century church historian Philip Schaff calls it "the watchword of Christian peacemakers."(1) The phrase is often attributed to the theologian …
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