Joshua wrote:

“Today, young men have diversions available to them that their fathers and grandfathers didn’t. The Internet, high-definition TV, Playstation 3… the list goes on and on.”

There was an article in the ‘Atlantic,’ I believe, recently about this phenomenon of late adolescence, and not just regarding the poor adolescents. Virutal life is quite amusing and secure. And there’s no shortage of smart, looking-for-relationships women drifting in and out of the scene.

Doug’s a quotation from Luther, who is always provocative, brilliant, and fundamentally wrongheaded. (How’s that for a sweeping generalization?) Bobal’s comments suggests how doubt cuts two ways, or shreds many ways. In general, Christians are to make choices that follow the law of charity (according to Augustine), but there have been more than a few instances of killing heretics in the name of charity (‘it’s for their own good’).

Wrichard wrote: “. . . what will happen is a) pensions in crisis; and b) a revision in behavior.”

History repeating itself would be funny if it weren’t so sad. Hdgreen’s analysis has its analogue in 14th century England, especially as represented in the great ‘vision’ poem “Piers the Plowman.” After chronicling the debauchments and clerical abuses of the time, the narrator witnesses Piers calling in Hunger to punish the lazy beggar folk:

“. . . thousands of blind and bed-ridden folk suddenly recovered, and men who used to sit begging for silver were miraculously cured! And the starving people appeased their hunger with bran-mash, and beggars and poor men worked gladly with peas for wages, pouncing like sparrowhawks on any work that Piers gave them (86). Then Piers feels pity for the people, and requests that Hunger leave the land. Hunger does, but not before advising Piers on how to handle these people. He quotes Genesis:”‘In the sweat of thy brow . . . shalt thou eat bread” – that is God’s command”” (87).

We’ll see what the next economic correction brings.