Books!

Korean_Romeo wrote: I just started reading this book. Quite appropriate book for Christmas season.

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I'm in the middle of this book, Reza Aslan's Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth. This is very good book! And I decided to post this talk, given by the author on the book. Very good!

Finally finished reading "The Wind is my Mother". I thought it was interesting and the author was a good storyteller too.

Currently reading Akashic Records by Gabrielle Orr. New Age material. And yes, I am fully aware of my eclectic tastes... But I can't help it.

Currently Hwang Sok Yong's "Die Geschichte des Herrn Han"
(Mr. Han's Chronicle) (한 씨 연대기)”is about a family separated by the Korean War.

Emergence - it's about monster/demon-like gorillas coming up from the nether regions of Earth and attacking humans.

Pretty lame. Not my type of book. I prefer more run of the mill crime, thrillers, action comedy and even the occasional romance book.

I recently finished reading "Night" by Elie Wiesel I've never cried so much, the book is truly great and gives you great insight to an individual who had experienced the life within the concentration camp during WWII and I began reading "The Singapore grip" which also takes place around the trip of WWII

I just started reading this book.

Not really a book but a horrible horrible harry potter fan fiction called My Immortal. They have dramatic readings online and they're actually very funny.

'The Great Zoo Of China' by Matthew Reilly. From 1/3 in it's the signature non-stop action I've come to know and love. It's like Jurassic Park/World except:

- It's got dragons
- It's in China
- The government tries to clean house later in the plot (which I saw coming).

you guys should maybe put in a small excerpt a few paragraphs long so we can get a taste of what the books are like.

I'm currently reading a book titled Socialism and the Churches by Rosa Luxemburg.

patches wrote: you guys should maybe put in a small excerpt a few paragraphs long so we can get a taste of what the books are like.

Here you go.


At the same time, the economic relations between the people and the clergy underwent a great change. Before the formation of this order, all that the rich members of the Church offered to the common property belonged to the poor people. Afterwards, a great part of the funds was spent on paying the clergy and running the Church. When, in the 4th Century, Christianity was protected by the government and was recognized at Rome as being the dominant religion, the persecutions of the Christians ended, and the services were no longer carried on in catacombs, or in modest halls, but in Churches which began to be more and more magnificently built. These expenses thus reduced the funds intended for the poor. Already, in the 5th Century, the revenues of the Church were divided into four parts; the first for the bishop, the second for the minor clergy, the third for the upkeep of the Church, and it was only the fourth part which was distributed among the needy. The poor Christian population received therefore a sum equal to what the Bishop received for himself alone.

In course of time the habit was lost of giving to the poor a sum determined in advance. Moreover, as the higher clergy gained in importance, the faithful no longer had contol over the property of the Church. The Bishops gave to the poor according to their good pleasure. The people received alms from their own clergy. But that is not all. At the beginning of Christianity, the faithful made goodwill offerings to the common stock. As soon as the Christian religion became a State religion, the clergy demanded that gifts must be brought by the poor as well as by the rich. From the 6th century, the clergy imposed a special tax, the tithe (tenth part of the crops), which had to be paid to the Church. This tax crushed the people like a heavy burden; in the course of the Middle Ages it became a real scourge to the peasants oppressed by serfdom. The tithe was levied on every piece of land, on every property. But it was always the serf who paid it by his labour. Thus the poor people not only lost the help and support of the Church, but they saw the priests ally themselves with their other exploiters: princes, nobles, moneylenders. In the Middle Ages, while the working people sank into poverty through serfdom, the Church grew richer and richer. Beside the tithe and other taxes, the Church benefited at this period from great donations, legacies made by rich debauchees of both sexes who wished to make up, at the last moment, for their life of sin. They gave and made over to the Church, money, houses, entire villages with their serfs, and often ground-rents or customary labour dues (corvées).

In this way the Church acquired enormous wealth. At the same time, the clergy ceased to be the “administrator” of the wealth which the Church had entrusted it. It openly declared in the 12th Century, by formulating a law which it said came from Holy Scripture, that the wealth of the Church belongs not to the faithful but is the individual property of the clergy and of its chief the Pope, above all. Ecclesiastical positions therefore offered the best opportunities to obtain large revenue. Each ecclesiastic disposed of the property of the Church as if it were his own and largely endowed from it his relatives, sons and grandsons. By this means the goods of the Church were pillaged and disappeared into the hands of the families of the clergy. For that reason, the Popes declared themselves to be the sovereign proprietors of the fortunes of the Church and ordained the celibacy of the clergy, in order to keep it intact and to prevent their patrimony from being dispersed. Celibacy was decreed in the 11th Century, but it was not put into practice until the 13th Century, in view of the opposition of the clergy. Further to prevent the dispersal of the Church’s wealth, in 1297 Pope Boniface VIII forbade ecclesiastics to make a present of their incomes to laymen, without permission of the Pope. Thus the Church accumulated enormous wealth, especially in arable lands, and the clergy of all Christian countries became the most important landed proprietor. It often possessed a third, or more than a third of all the lands of the country!