In a recent article in the New York Review of Books, the Oxford historian Diarmaid MacCulloch described the source of the divergence in forms of art routinely displayed in Orthodox, Catholic, and Protestant churches. The major Christian denominations disagree about a wide range of matters of doctrine and practice, about which they have argued for many centuries, and one area of dispute concerns the appropriateness of certain objects and images in places of worship. MacCulloch pointed out that the varieties of church practice with regard to the display of images stem from differences in the interpretation of Hebrew scripture, in particular disagreements about whether, in the Book of Exodus, the first commandment is really comprised of two commandments, or, to put the contrary view, whether the second in not really a commandment at all, but only a coda to the first.
On Kindness
Most Friday nights my wife and I eat dinner at the same place. We sit at the same table with the same waiter and order the same cocktails, the same entrees. We’ve been doing this long enough that they know us. They know our habits and have been known to call and ask if we’re coming if tables begin to run short. We’re not alone in this. There are many people who frequent this particular place regularly and have been doing so for years. And so, it came as a surprise on a recent evening when walking up to the front door we encountered another regular patron berating the manager for their policy requiring masks. This was not a reasoned argument for or against the effectiveness of wearing masks against the spread of coronavirus. This was closer to a toddler’s temper tantrum thrown by a grown man who, by all outward appearances is professionally successful if not well adjusted, verbally abusing a hospitality worker as if it was his God-given right.
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I’m on the first business trip since the Covid-19 thing began, back in Atlanta for a series of meetings, and I’ve been struck by the contrasts. The airports are quiet in a way I’ve never seen in my life, and I’ve been more or less constantly in the air since I was eighteen years old. There is less ambient noise but you can hear individual conversations much more readily because when people do talk with one another, they have to raise their voice to be heard through their masks. And everyone is in a mask once you enter the air travel zone: it’s not like out on the street in some places – Atlanta prime among them – where only a minority are wearing them in public.