[BLOG] Some Monday links

• The Burgh Diaspora points to articles discussing Germany’s ongoing demographic issues.
• Crooked Timber’s John Quiggin meditates on the rapid urbanization of China.
• Daniel Drezner expects somewhat more out of the recent Iranian election of a moderate president than of North Korea’s latest diplomatic moves.
• The Dragon’s Tales’ Will Baird shares the news that none of the planets discovered orbiting Tau Ceti are likely to be habitable, e being Venus-like and f closer to Mars. There’s still space for a low-mass planet orbiting between e and f, though, right?
• Geocurrents criticizes the recently publicized linguistics thesis claiming that languages which have ejective consonants are likely to have evolved in mountainous areas, where these sharp sounds are suited to area with low air pressure.
• Marginal Revolution’s Tyler Cowen agrees now with Dani Rodrik’s long-staning critique of Turkish politics this past decade as undemocratic.
• The New APPS Blog notes the blemishing of Erdogan’s record in Turkey and mass protests in Brazil’s Sao Paulo over public transit.
• The Power and the Money’s Noel Maurer wonders if the Colombian-American alliance might worsen Colombia’s insurgencies.
• Peter Rukavina shares the GIS numbers of Prince Edward Island, the geographical coordinates of a box encompassing the island province.
• Torontoist notes that Toronto saw the first pay-TV show, a 1961 Bob Newhart special.
• The Volokh Conspiracy notes the imprisonment in Egypt of a Muslim cleric convicted of offending Christians.

[LINK] Two links on the position of the Serbian Orthodox Church

The first article is Sara Milosevic’s Global Post article “Why Pope Francis isn’t welcome in Serbia”, which connects the lack of a papal visit to Serbia to continuing Serbian resentment over the massacres committed by Catholic Croats of Serbs during the Second World War, and what Serbia and its national church see as a lack of specific repentance.

Balkan history considers Roman Catholic clergy responsible for the death of 700,000 Serbs, Jews and Roma killed in the concentration camp Jasenovac, given the church’s close relationship with the Nazi-affiliated Independent State of Croatia, as well as the forcible conversions of 240,000 Serbian Orthodox to Roman Catholicism.

”An apology would be a gesture that instills hope that something like that will never happen again,” said Patriarch Irinej, the current leader of the Serbian Orthodox Church.

On the Catholic side, Monsignor Stanislav Hocevar, the archbishop of Belgrade, cannot understand why Serbia insists on a special papal apology, citing John Paul II’s apology in 2000 “ for the sins of Catholics throughout the ages for violating the rights of ethnic groups and peoples.”

During his visit to Bosnia and Croatia in 2003, the pope also apologized for the crimes of Catholic Croats. He held a Mass at the Petrićevac Monastery in Banja Luka, a place where the Croatian Ustase massacred over 2,500 Serbs in February 1941.

However, Serbian Orthodox Metropolitan Jovan of Zagreb strictly demanded that the Pope Francis pay a tribute to the victims of Jasenovac before he visit Serbia, like Pope Benedict did during his visit to Poland where he paid a tribute to Jewish victims.

The second, Vesa Peric Zimonjic’s Inter Press Service article “At Political Rally, Serbian Church Crosses Sensitive Line” recounts how the Serbian Orthodox Church, which became enormously strong after the dissolution of Yugoslavia, is coming into conflict over its sustained nationalism.

The influential Serbian Orthodox Church publicly crossed a line recently when two of its top clergymen took part in a Belgrade rally with messages amounting to direct threats against the lives of government officials.

The rally [. . .] was organised by opponents of Serbia’s recent and historic agreement with Kosovo that essentially ceded authority over Kosovo’s Serb population to Pristina.

“We pray for the dead souls of government and parliament, and may all their sins be forgiven,” Archbishop Amfilohije told some 3,000 ultra nationalists who gathered at the central Republic Square.

Amfilohije’s words were followed by a warning from Bishop Atanasije to current Prime Minister Ivica Dacic. “The prime minister speaks about real politics only,” the bishop said. “That is how Prime Minister Zoran Djindjic [assassinated in 2003] used to speak, and we all know how he ended.”

[. . .]

“Nothing can justify the scandalous behaviour of two bishops at the rally,” religion analyst and author Mirko Djordjevic told IPS. “Speeches by two SPC [Serbian Orthodox Church] primates are unprecedented and will certainly bear influence on future relations between the government and the church.”

“It’s high time the SPC stopped meddling into affairs of state,” commented leading Belgrade daily Blic. “The reputation of this institution has now been burnt to the ground, and its hate speech should be sanctioned.”

[BLOG] Some Wednesday links

• In one of his first posts since moving back to Toronto, Acts of Minor Treason’s Andrew Barton describes coming across the immediate aftermath of a terrible accident (or “accident”) at Union station and wondering about the lack of empathy expressed by commuters.
• Bag News Notes features a post from South Side Chicago resident and photographer Jon Lowenstein, who caught the immediate aftermath of a shooting in his neighbourhood.
• Centauri Dreams’ Paul Gilster describes the dreams of American rocket pioneer robert Goddard of interstellar migrations.
• At Crooked Timber, Eric Rauchway documents that Keynes’ concern about the consequences of war indemnities on the economies of Germany and central Europe long predated any sexual affair with Germans.
• Daniel Drezner notes how off-base Marc Lynch’s statement that the ongoing war in Syria undermines a pleasant narrative of the Arab Spring is, since there was plenty of suffering beforehand.
• Extraordinary Observations’ Rob Pitingolo doesn’t like it when cyclists are in too much of a hurry pay attention to red lights, other vehicle drivers too.
• At Lawyers, Guns and Money, B. Spencer argues that guns in the United States are much more a fetishistic icon of belonging than anything else like resisting government oppression.
• Mark Simpson reposts his 2001 review of Niall Ferguson’s book The Cash Nexus.
• Marginal Revolution’s Tyler Cowen notes that Jamaica has seen sustained austerity for decades and also flat economic growth. Connection? And what of Europe?
• Torontoist notes that plans for a proposed shopping centre in Kensington Market along Bathurst Street have been released. Controversy will ensue.
• Window on Eurasia notes statistics suggesting that only 3% of Russians attended the Russian Orthodox Church’s Easter services.

[LINK] “After cathedral clash, Copts doubt future in Egypt”

I’ve been mulling over Ulf Laessing’s Reuters article recounting general despair among Egypt’s Copts that they can ever find themselves at home in their country, and that to save themselves they must leave, since the article’s publication on the 11th of this month. Is there some exaggeration afoot, or are things really that irresolvably bad? (I will note that Mubarak’s regime was hardly especially kind to Christians, either; ongoing issues with religious freedom in Egypt seem to long predate 2011.)

When Egyptian Christian Kerollos Maher watched on television as petrol bombs and rocks rained on Cairo’s Coptic Orthodox Cathedral he had only one thought – emigration.

“Egypt is no longer my country,” said the 24-year-old construction worker, standing in the courtyard of the country’s largest cathedral where one Copt and one Muslim died in sectarian clashes this week.

“The situation of Christians is worsening from day to day. I’ve given up hope that things will improve,” he said.

Christians, who make up a tenth of Egypt’s 84 million people, have been worrying about the rise of militant Islamists since the fall of President Hosni Mubarak in 2011.

But after days of fighting at the cathedral and a town outside Cairo killing eight – the worst sectarian strife since Islamist President Mohamed Mursi was elected in June – many Copts now question whether they have a future in Egypt.

An angry young fringe of a community that has lived in Egypt since the earliest days of Christianity may also be turning to violence.

“The attack on the cathedral was the crossing of a red line,” said Michael Sanouel, a 23-year old technician in a steel plant. Sanouel rushed to the cathedral “to defend it” when he heard about the clashes that lasted more than five hours.

“I have been looking for a while for a job abroad, in Italy or Germany,” he said, standing next to a piece of charred wood from a tree hit by a petrol bomb hurled over the compound wall.

“I have two children but I don’t want them to grow up under a Muslim Brotherhood regime,” said Sanouel, who slept in the cathedral compound like dozens of others after the clashes, ready to defend it if more confrontations erupted.

[LINK] “In France, Foreign Aid in the Form of Priests”

Maïa de la Baume‘s New York Times article describes the repetition, in the Roman Catholic communities of France, of a pattern I’ve read of elsewhere in Roman Catholic communities elsewhere in the world where the numbers of parishoners taking holy orders have dropped off: priests migrate from Third World countries, often former colonies, to take over congregations in the former colonizer.

I’m not inclined to think this a good strategy. In the countries which receive these clerical migrants, differences between the priest’s perceptions of the norms of acceptable religious practice and the congregation’s can be quite serious (conservatives priests and liberal parishoners are the conflictual combination I’ve heard of), perhaps enough to create greater conflict between the Church and its members and so worsen things. In the countries which send well-trained clerics, meanwhile, the brain-drain of priests can weaken the position of a Church that is still, despite its vigour, new on the ground.

In Togo, the Rev. Rodolphe Folly used to conduct exuberant Sunday services for a hundred believers of all ages, who sang local gospel music and went up to him to offer what they had.

In this quiet town in Burgundy, he preaches to a more somber audience of about 40 gray-haired retirees in an unadorned 19th-century church that can accommodate up to 600 people.

“In my country, we applaud, we acclaim, we shout,” said Father Folly, a Roman Catholic priest who spoke in the living room of his modern, modest house. “Here, even when I ask people to shake hands, they say no.”

Father Folly, 45, has settled in this town of about 9,000 residents, assigned to replace an aging priest. He has brought his jovial smile and good heart to a place where religious practice is weak, as it is in many other areas of France. He is part of a battalion of priests who have come to France from abroad — from places like Benin, Burkina-Faso, Cameroon but also Vietnam and Poland — who now represent about 10 percent of France’s declining clerical ranks.

[. . .]

The flow of priests from the developing world to wealthier churches in the West amounts to a brain drain within the church. The ratio of priests to parishes is just as bad, if not worse, in the developing world as it is in the West, but the Western nations have the resources to relocate and support these foreign priests. Bishops from Europe and the United States recruit priests from the global south in ad hoc arrangements with local bishops and religious orders, usually without any involvement from the Vatican. The flow of Catholic missionaries, who used to leave France, Italy, Ireland and the United States for the developing world, has now been largely reversed.

The decline of the priesthood as a vocation is particularly pronounced in France, a country that defines itself as secular. Magnificent churches dot the country, but France’s clergy is old and ordinations of priests are in continuing decline. The average age of France’s 14,000 priests is 72.

About 1,600, the number of foreign priests has nearly tripled over the last eight years, with many being recruited to parishes in urban areas and the Parisian suburbs.

[BLOG] Some Friday links

• A Budding Sociologist or not, Dan Hirschman has a fascinating Q&A up with Canada-based economist Morten Jerven talking about the extent to which economic–and other–statistics in Africa are flawed.
• Bad Astronomy’s Phil Plait notes the landmark discovery of a distant supernova, a Type 1A supernova 10.5 billion light years away (and 10.5 billion years in the past).
• Bag News Notes comments on the “Jew in a Box” display of a Berlin museum. Providing contemporary German museum-goers with a volunteer Jew to talk about their Jewish experiences may be well-intentioned, but it also has obvious negative echoes.
• Beyond the Beyond’s Bruce Sterling links to an interesting essay on the ethics of geoengineering.
• Eastern Approaches visits a desolate, impoverished town in Bulgaria.
• New APPS Blog takes on the ridiculous philosophizing of libertarian economist Steven Landsberg, who suggested that no harm is done to a person–a woman, naturally-who was raped while she was unconscious.
• Progressive Download’s John Farrell is quite unimpressed with the Vatican’s latest statement about the authenticity of the Shroud of Turin. Something peer-reviewed and new, not just a remining of old data, would be nice.
• Steve Munro talks about various developments in Toronto transit.
• Understanding Society’s Daniel Little takes a look at Jonathan Haidt’s theory about the natural origins of moral intuitions.

[BLOG] Some Wednesday links

• Bag News Notes takes a look at the politi8cal iconography surrounding Chinese first lady, and patriotic singer, Peng Liuang.
• BCer in Toronto Jeff Jedras doesn’t like suggestion like the one made by Liberal leadership candidate Joyce Murray that, in order to bring down Harper, the NDP and Liberals should consider not running candidates in ridings where one party or another might break through against Conservatives. He favours a distinctly Liberal vision (which is?).
• Beyond the Beyond’s Bruce Sterling notes the recent finding that up to a third of American counties have declining populations.
• Daniel Drezner suggests that Europeans were never as strongly wedding to multilateralism as many, including Europeans, alleged.
• Eastern Approaches notes the failure of European Union-mediated talks between Kosova and Serbia, a consequence of Serbian resentment at the loss of Kosova.
• Geocurrents’ Martin Lewis maps global cell phone usage, which maps poorly with GDP per capita or wealth. Eastern European countries often have higher rates of cell phone ownership per person than western Europeans, for instance.
• Joe. My. God notes that the Irish Roman Catholic Church has threatened to respond to a legalization of same-sex marriage in that country by no longer solemnizing marriages, forcing couples to engage in a separate state ceremony. (This could backfire.)
• Personal Reflections’ Jim Belshaw argues that his home region of New England, in coastal eastern Australia, is an important political bellweather for his country.
• At the Planetary Science Blog, Marc Rayman writes about how his team is preparing for the Dawn probe’s upcoming encounter with Ceres in two years.
• Torontoist notes the happy news that Toronto sex shop Come As You Are has avoided closing down thanks to a successful online promotional campaign.
• Window on Eurasia’s Paul Goble notes various sources claiming that the 900 thousand ethnic Russians of Uzbekistan are increasingly unhappy living in a country where the Russian language is dropping out of general usage, the Russian colonial past in Uzbekistan is being criticized, and the only thing keeping many from leaving for Russia is a lack of means.

[PHOTO] St. Michael Archangel, 212 Delaware Avenue

This is a sign of St. Michael Archangel, a church of the Serbian Orthodox denomination located at 212 Delaware Avenue just north of Bloor Street West.

[BLOG] Some Friday links

• The Burgh Diaspora notes that, in different American cities, efforts are being made to promote local educational and medical institutions. Some cities may do better than others.
• Centauri Dreams’ Paul Gilster notes an astronomer who thinks that Earth-like planets–roughly Earth-size with broadly Earth-like environments–may be commoner around red dwarf stars than thought.
• Crooked Timber’s Corey Robin notes the uncontested presence of racist and oligarchic John C. Calhoun’s thinking on the American right.
• Geocurrents maps, after evangelical Christians, their different missionary efforts around the world.
• At Lawyers, Guns and Money, Scott Lemieux links approvingly to Mark Tushnet, who argues that of course the American government can’t make ultimately definitive statements about when American military force can be used.
• The Power and the Money’s Noel Maurer observes that senates aren’t popular anywhere in the world, it seems, but that the United States actually has a constitutional bar against abolishing its upper house.
• The Population Reference Bureau’s blog notes that the American metropolitan areas that experienced the strongest population growth are the ones with strong private job markets and federal funding.
• Torontoist’s Patrick Metzger notes that there was never a Cold War-era nuclear shelter beneath Queen’s Park. Rather, it was in Aurora.
• Towleroad reports that the National Organization on Marriage has just insulted two American supreme court judges by stating that the adoption that constituted their families is a second-best option next to natural procreation.
• The Volokh Conspiracy’s Ilya Somin argues that good arguments exist for the American Supreme Court to repudiate the court decision legitimizing the deportation of Japanese-Americans in the Second World War.
• Chechen pressures on Ingushetia to merge with the Chechen republic, Window on Eurasia argues, have been enabled by the Putin regime’s desire to consolidate Russia’s federal units.

[LINK] “The Pope From Beyond the Seas”

In a blog post at the Chronicle of Higher Education, scholar of religion and globalization Philip Jenkins makes the point that, in many respects, Argentina is the perfect point of origin for the first non-European Pope: a Latin American country of note that’s also a leading neo-Europe, arguably the most Italian country by descent and culture outside of Italy, a church of the Global South dealing with the problems of secularization much like the Church in the Global North.

For decades the prospect of a pope from outside Europe has both excited and alarmed observers of the Roman Catholic Church. As the number of Catholics has grown steadily in the Global South, the continuing domination of the church by European prelates has seemed ever more unjust. By 2030 nearly 80 percent of the world’s Catholics will live in Africa, Asia, or Latin America, and Africa will be home to more Catholics than Europe itself. Is such a church to be headed forever by those from Western Europe, a region rapidly succumbing to secularism?

The shift was going to come, and when it did, no country was better suited to provide the pathbreaker than Argentina. Finally we see a pope who can claim to speak for Latin America and the non-European world. For Catholics of the Global South, the symbolic move is decisive and probably marks the start of an indefinite sequence of non-European popes.

[. . .]

The more we examine Argentina, the more perfect Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio seems as a choice, even for the more conservative Europeans. If we imagine an Italian cardinal grumbling at being forced to look overseas for a pope, it quickly becomes clear why an Argentine would be the most attractive choice. While North Americans tend to lump Latin American countries together, Argentina is in fact distinctive.

It is by far the most European nation on its continent, and specifically the most Italian. People of Italian heritage represent a large proportion of its population, and in the late 19th century it was the favored destination of those Italian migrants who did not head to the United States. Of course the country has plenty of other ethnic groups, notably Germans and Syrians/Lebanese, but it is the Italian character that has most profoundly marked Argentina’s society and politics. Just as the British see Australia and New Zealand as distant cousins, so many Italians regard Argentina.

Argentina is also notably European in its history and tradition. It is Latin American, yes, but emphatically not part of the third world. At least through the 1950s, Argentina was definitively part of the advanced West, the first world, to the point that economists wrote learned essays on why Argentina had succeeded so thoroughly while other colonial possessions, like Australia, remained in the doldrums of underdevelopment and colonial exploitation. Right up to the 1940s, Buenos Aires was one of the world’s largest and most sophisticated cities, commonly fifth in line after London, New York, Paris, and Berlin.

Moreover, unlike other Latin American countries such as Mexico or Brazil, Argentina has only a small surviving Native or Indian population, so questions of religious inculturation scarcely arise.

Additionally, the Argentine church faces problems that are immediately recognizable from Rome or Madrid. While the country has small Pentecostal and evangelical minorities, they are nowhere near as strong as in neighboring Brazil or Chile. Instead, the greatest challenge comes from secularism; perhaps 15 percent declare themselves nonreligious, and the great majority of self-declared Catholics practice the faith minimally, if at all. Many notional Catholics spurn the church’s attempts to intervene in the public realm.