St. Maximos' Hut

I spent today wandering Geneva, including a visit to the absolutely lovely Russian Orthodox Church here. A beautiful service (if a tad long for non-Russian speakers at 2.25 hrs) for Vespers with a really terrific choir. I think I learned to recognize "Lord have mercy" by the end of the service, but the point of this was not comprehension on my part.

The Museum of the Reformation was a bit expensive, so I didn't go in but I did tour the gift shop. Now, what kind of gifts might one find in a Museum of the Reformation gift shop? There were Reformation gimme caps (baseball caps to those who haven't lived in the South). I am not sure where one wears such a cap these days - perhaps to interfaith soccer matches. There is also a cut out figure of Calvin (or a Calvin-look alike) into which you can stick your head and be photographed. I took a photo of it (not with me in it, there wasn't anyone else around) and will post it when I get home and can download my pictures, a Calvin beer gift set with 2 bottles of a local microbrew called Calvinus and a Calvin commemorative glass (sadly out of stock, but a steal at CHF7), and Calvin chocolates, with his head embossed on them (perhaps these are for Catholics to buy and enjoy eating?). It was the gift shop that convinced me to save my CHF14 and not go in - a museum selling hats, chocolates and beer seemed unlikely to also to have any serious content. (To be fair, they do have books for sale, although not too many in English, and the hats are technically museum hats, but they do just say "R" on them, without specifying museum or movement).

Museums are a great thing generally and gift shops are a good fundraiser. But wouldn't a, well, church be a better way to express the ideals of the Reformation? I'm not sure what Calvin would think about beer and chocolate - he always looks kind of dour - but maybe the Reformation wasn't all about theology -- maybe they had fun too - putting on their Reformation hats and hitting the town for some Calvinus beer. (The beer folks have a great, Monty-Pythonesque web site that is well worth a look.)

An interesting account here of the reburials of some of the Whites. Via The Corner.

Stuart Buck got one of the "Dear Sir, I am the widow of X, with $Y billion to share with you..." letters with a twist: it's all for Jesus.

My conference finished in Geneva, so I went off to see the city. I found the Cathedral of St. Pierre, where there is a chair with a sign "Calvin's Chair." I didn't want to take a photo in the church (although a large group of tourists ahead of me was flashing away) but I did buy a postcard of this piece of furniture.

Fr. Gregory brought up the following point in a comment to an earlier post:

Like it our not, how my non-Orthodox or non-Christian neighbor lives does have consquences for my life. How, can I/we encourage marital fidelity (which is not only for my neighbor's good, but the common good, and those my good) in those members of society who do not subscribe to any religious tradition? In other words, what can be done in the public square to replace the ontological individualism that is becoming increasingly the norm in society?

My libertarian instincts prompt the following responses:

1) costs imposed on me by my neighbors are not all costs I get to have a say about. Some costs (throwing trash on my lawn, harboring dangerous wild animals) I can address through trespass and nuisance law. But neighbors' marriages, whether sunny or stormy, will rarely produce impacts on me that the law recognizes as actionable. I think that is as it should be - once the state starts acting like a busy body, there's no telling where it will end up poking its nose. So I think there are many depressing aspects of my hypothetical neighbors' lives (my real neighbors are very nice) that I will just have to deal with on my own, without society's aid.

2) there are moral obligations imposed on people by their beliefs that are greater than the legal obligations imposed by society. Thus if a neighbor's marriage is on the rocks or imposing costs on the rest of the neighborhood, private action may be called for. There is a strong trend toward private neighborhood associations, organizations which often do impose constraints (rarely about marriages, usually about landscaping and so on). My friend Bob Nelson has a new book on the topic that is on my desk, awaiting time to savor it. I think this is the sphere in which we must address the concerns Fr. Gregory raises.

Not to visit any particularly Calvin-related sites but to speak at the IATA's Aviation Security conference: Anticipating the Unexpected. (The title does sound vaguely like a revival meeting.) So I may not be around much the next couple of days.

The more I reflect on the moral issues raised in Serenity, the more I like it. I probably need to see it again.

There's a nice review/reflection here (which I found, as with all that is Good and Wise on the web, via InstaPundit) that makes some good points (including some plot spoilers, so don't read if you haven't seen but plan to see the movie):

"The social experimentation that brought about the Reavers and the rightfully negative commentary on it can be understood as an attack on the belief that social engineering and 'meddlesome' policy can lead to human perfectability--'a world without sin' as the Operative puts it."

It is possible to see a great deal of government today as attempts to engineer us closer to a "world without sin". These attempts tend to be constructed by people who deny the fallen nature of man, which makes their attempts doomed to fail, usually with horrific consequences. One such attempt went down to defeat this weekend in Brazil, again via InstaPundit.