blackshama's commentary on Philippine issues

As the secular University of the Philippines celebrates its 100th year in 2008, Pope Benedict XVI's speech that he was supposed to deliver at Rome's La Sapienza Universitylast January 17 gives us some food for thought. EWTN has the full English text of the speech originally in Italian. I have always admired and have been amazed at Benedict's way of discourse. The former Don of Regensburg does not fall into stereotyping and logical twists unlike the Don of Oxford Richard Dawkins! That's why I await the day when the Oxford Don meets with the Infallible Regensburg Don! Bui I digress here are some highlights of the speech. " Well, so far I have only talked about the university in the Middle Ages, trying however to show to what extent its nature and purpose have remained the same all along. In modern times knowledge has become more multi-faceted, especially in the two broad fields that now prevail in universities. First of all, there are the natural sciences which have ...

Depending on the style of prose, history books are fun in the past two weeks, I borrowed books on the medieval age. From the library, I borrowed books on the Crusades. Christopher Tyerman's God's war : a new history of the Crusades is the latest opus (1023 pages) on the subject. The book has a new view on the significance of the crusades on the West, now that it has to face the challenge of Islamic militancy. The new interpretations shoot down the post-colonial view that the Crusades were Europe's first colonial enterprise. Post WWII Crusade historiography downplayed the religious impulse that drove this movement. Tyerman's book is a literal and academic heavy read. Robert Payne's "The Dream and the Tomb" is a more novel-like treatment of history. Payne's historical works include biographies of Stalin. Mussolini and Hitler as well as histories of Islam and the medieval Catholic Church . His Hitler biography is acclaimed. You may ask why Payne ...