I'm trying to decide on what to do for my HIST2606 (history of warfare) essay. I've narrowed it down to two topics:
- In what sense was the First World War the first "modern" war?
or
- In what ways can the Second World War be considered a "total war"?
Both are appealing, and would be relatively easy to answer... I'm just not sure!
Today is the Ekka public holiday, which kinda sucks for me because I don't have uni on Wednesdays, so i don't really get an extra day off. I hope everybody that works full time is enjoying their day.
Last night there was a talk at Church by Fr. Dimitri on Australian society and the Church. Although I found it somewhat contradictory, and i think that most priests when criticising protestants tend to forget their basis for splitting from the Catholic Church, I still for the most part enjoyed the talk.
do you want easy or good marks? for the former, i'd run with the second (and vice versa). the term 'ways' means that you can use a bunch of examples (eg locations, devotion of budget). 'sense', however, means that you have to get a feeling and then explain it - more difficult; but if you can pull it off, it sounds a lot better.
you must tell me about the talk on sat'day or sooner.
just to put a something against yours (since i unavoidably missed the talk 🙁 ), most priests are criticising protestants are criticising their modern day exponents - after all, there is no force to stay there. not only that, the excesses of protestantism are the same now as they were then. also, the eastern patriarchs had dialogue with some major leaders of the move away from Catholicism - Luther, for instance - so the same issues remain.
i'm sure we'll discuss this in more detail f2f 😀
in XC, a/s
Well, i've chosen the second one.
I won't pretend to know as much on the subject of Church history as you Andrew, but I guess what i'm trying to mainly say is that [the orginal] protestants did not all get up and leave the [Catholic] Church just because they felt like it was a good idea at the time (although some did). The Church (i would say both East and West) has done (or people had done in the name of the Church) some pretty atrocious things throughout history.
freely acknowledged. 'the originals', so to speak, were fleeing a rather bad situation (to put it lightly).
btw, what atrocities has the east done? (not trying to deny any, simply don't know of any)
a/s
One that comes to mind recently were Serbian Orthodox congregations displaying large pictures of Slobodan Milosevic in processions in services in the 90s, and of course the ethnic cleansing of muslims in Kosovo which some did in the name of creating an ethnically pure Christian area. Of course in both of these cases I severely doubt these were sanctioned by the Church, but were still done in the name of it.
didn't know about the first one.
the second, however, is actually dubious. it seems more that clinton needed a diversion from lewinskygate. and right now, the opposite is happening: said muslims (albanians?) are ethnically-cleansing all Christian, both adherents and sites. nato is not the best defender, the main strategy being 'evacuate churches, and come back later', after which, of course, the only marker of the site is smoke. oh, and the occaisional (german, i think) rcc priest tricking the elder (and more senile) serbian Orthodox to commune, and forcing the rest to participate in the mass (hold candles, etc). all this while they were supposed to be protected by various nato countries! bring back russia and greece to guard the kosovar sites! they do it properly! which is actually true, the greek forces don't retreat from the site, they stand and fight - and the churches remain. don't think the russians have anything to do with it.
a/s
The first thing was quite widely published. I remember doing an essay on ethnic cleansing a few years back, and stumbled across an article which (quite wongly) partly blaimed Serbian Orthodoxy for their support of Milosevic and his regime's policies. Included were pictures of them brandishing the pictures of him in a service. Quite appalling actually. For the most however, the Serbian Church opposed Milosevic wholeheartedly.
I'm sure there are 'ethic cleansers' on both both sides of the conflict. I remember seeing this documentary which showed this old lady pulling icons out of a destroyed Church, and she had an icon of Christ which had shrapnel stuck all over it, but not one piece actually touching the His body in the icon, it seemed like it was just all sprayed around Him in the icon.