Word: schmemann
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...words of the scholar Alexander Schmemann, “It is not because it gives life that love is good: it is because it is good that it gives life.” The Catechism of the Catholic Church says, “Homosexuality closes the sexual act to the gift of life and does not proceed from a genuine and affective sexual complementarity.” In light of the nature and design of our human sexuality, we must affirm in a spirit of undying love our commitment to opposing any action which sanctions or encourages behavior...
Highly specific in its substance yet encompassing in its vision, Serge Schmemann's new book, Echoes of a Native Land: Two Centuries of a Russian Village, is like a flash of light. It captures in an instant a jumbled collection of details in the past of a village, then slowly-fades--leaving as a general impression a sense of the history and of the prospects of Russia as a whole...
...histories of Koltsovo's residents and their families has the remarkable effect of compressing time. Echoes of a Native Land is not a particularly quick read. The narrative reflects research and experience spanning 17 years of the author's life. Yet by not relating the past in chronological order, Schmemann is able to condense 200 years of history into the blink of an eye. As a whole, this compressed history expresses a sense of waste and of sadness for communism's unfortunate effects on Russia's fate and for the country's difficulties in its present attempts at democracy...
...Schmemann recognizes both the faults of tsarist Russia and the positive aspects of the communist dream. He leaves us with sympathy for the trials of the Russian countryside and with the recognition that, accustomed to changing forms of oppression and persecution, the people of a Russian village are understandably averse to individual risk. Pursuing new and uncertain methods of production, even if successful, could lead to punishment if the government's idea of what is acceptable in production again changes--all of which implies that a successful transition to democracy in Russia will be difficult atbest...
...Echoes of a Native Land, Serge Schmemann provides a unique glimpseinto a set of lives within Russia as they were affected by the Bolshevik revolution. The events of the past are presented according to theirsignificance in Koltsovo, not Moscow, and the result is a narrative that helps explain the psychological effects of communism and the feelings of a set of rural people in the face of a new political order...