Save Nazanin

I decided to take a week to talk about the passing of Pope (may God have mercy on him) for a few reasons. One, he was an extraordinary figure, and one needs time to digest a life like that. Two, I needed to understand what it meant to me personally. Three, the constant coverage was somewhat sickening. As a result, I’ve decided rather than talking about the person of the Pope, I would rather talk about the figure of the Pope, and what his passing made me understand. For those of you who wish to have an understanding of how…

Book Review – Holy Ignorance – By Olivier Roy – NYTimes.com. Yule as we celebrate it today owes more to Charles Dickens than to Thomas Aquinas. Our major solstice holiday is what Roy calls a “cultural construct” rather than a sectarian ceremony, which explains why Muslims buy halal turkeys and Jews transformed Hanukkah into a gift-giving occasion. Mistakenly believing that Christmas is sacred, those who defend it find themselves propping up the profane. The Christ they want in Christmas is a product not of Nazareth but of Madison Avenue.