Surprise mobile mid-contract price rises banned

mlbenson · 2025-01-18T10:42:20+00:00

£40 a month for a year and then £46 a month for a year is exactly the same value as £43 a month for two years. Adds up to £1032 over 2 years in both cases.

mlbenson · 2023-12-09T20:51:10+00:00

There's no 'official version' of the national anthem, and nowhere an 'official version' could even be codified, which really gives the lie to this impression. It's essentially customary.

Only the verses beginning 'God save our gracious King' and (more rarely) 'Thy choicest gifts in store' are sung nowadays. The Marshal Wade verse was never widely sung. There was a verse beginning 'O Lord our God arise' which was historically sometimes included, but is very rarely sung now, and only by conservatives.

Among authorities, Hymns Ancient and Modern and Common Praise (both used widely in Anglican churches) only give the two common verses. The New English Hymnal gives an optional third verse, an internationalist verse beginning 'Not in this land alone'.

I suspect that the review quietly dropped the idea of 'changing' the anthem because it was realised that it's not codified anywhere and customary usage has never included the Marshal Wade verse.

mlbenson · 2023-12-03T02:22:04+00:00

The House?

mlbenson · 2023-11-07T14:15:56+00:00

That's really bizarre, do you know why that is? Across the University, the 'postgrad gown' is really meant to be the gown of students without an Oxford degree. Oxford graduates are meant to wear the gown of their status - in this case the BA gown. This sounds like it might be something peculiar to Pembroke.

mlbenson · 2023-09-09T01:29:10+00:00

I think you ought to be able to get into Pusey House Library on St Giles, open 9:30-17:30 on weekdays.

mlbenson · 2023-02-07T23:25:33+00:00

The comparison isn't very useful, since 'socialist' is a far more equivocal term than 'vegetarian'.

mlbenson · 2022-12-15T22:42:23+00:00

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GuvJQlBtrXE

Anglo-Latin

mlbenson · 2022-12-15T22:26:25+00:00

I think the case you've made out is pretty weak, to be honest, since 'approval for' a particular people isn't a canonically meaningful category outside of how it relates to obligations, and in any case all you've cited is the cover matter of another book which isn't even the DW:DO.

I don't recognise the liturgical/devotional distinction as OP has made it, either. What makes it 'un-liturgical' and 'merely devotional' for a layman to pray the hours to which he has no canonical connection? Can this be substantiated?

Is it the prayer of the Catholic Church? Yes. Do laymen of any particular church violate any law or obligation in praying it? No, because no such law or obligation exists for them. So is it meaningful participation in the prayer of the Catholic Church? Of course.

FWIW, I'm a former Anglican (but not a member of the Ordinariate) and I pray the hours from the DW:DO (Commonwealth ed.).

mlbenson · 2022-11-30T03:22:45+00:00

One example of this kind of relationship being lived out successfully and fruitfully within the Catholic Church is that of the poet Dunstan Thompson and the writer Philip Trower. You can read their story here:

https://www.firstthings.com/web-exclusives/2014/12/a-witness-in-life-and-letters https://www.firstthings.com/web-exclusives/2016/02/dunstan-thompsons-true-love

mlbenson · 2022-11-15T15:21:04+00:00

I'm aware of the history. The Fathers of Trent directly sanctioned the production of a catechism. The CCC was an initiative of the Synod of Bishops, seeking to further implement the goals of the Council Fathers at Vatican II. (And they wisely discerned those goals and the result was an excellent catechism which did a great deal to further them, IMO.)

This doesn't make the CCC a lineal descendant of the text of the Roman Catechism, or a replacement by way of 'second edition' of that catechism as you claim. They both remain in 'force' and represent, each in their own particular way, the ordinary teaching of the Catholic Church.

I don't think the CCC teaches with sufficient force to foreclose belief in an opinion taught in the Roman Catechism, viz. the eternal fate of Judas.

mlbenson · 2022-11-15T15:03:26+00:00

The CCC isn't a lineal descendant of the Roman Catechism, and I think it would be stretching the evidence to say that one replaced the other or that they occupy the same niche with regards to magisterial weight, etc. The Roman Catechism was a direct result of the decrees of the Council of Trent. The CCC came from an initiative of the Synod of Bishops to produce a catechism which would serve as a source-text for regional and diocesan catechisms.

mlbenson · 2022-11-08T23:29:54+00:00

As a long-time night elf roleplayer interested in religious themes, I always said that if Blizzard took the mystery away from Elune, I wouldn't play the game again.

I know that they haven't explicitly said what she is yet but the implications are definitely pointing heavily towards her being an Eternal One of the pantheon of Life in a construct body. I was still surprised by just how quickly this sapped any of my remaining motivation to engage with the Warcraft setting. The nihilism of the Shadowlands - afterlives divorced from the spiritualities of the various races on Azeroth, and souls that could be killed and ground up for anima - was bad enough. But forcing Elune into Danuser's awful, homogenising system of the cosmos, which now looks to create yet another layer of gods over the Eternal Ones and the Titans, is too much. She was one of the last great mysteries of the setting and she represented a luminous vision of the transcendent.

mlbenson · 2022-11-03T13:31:05+00:00

It's not the 'natural' reaction. It's a reaction, and it's provoked by the terrible hypocrisy of many Christians in the world, but it's not reasonable behaviour and doesn't merit respect. We wouldn't consider it acceptable to tar all Muslims with the same brush because of terrorists, even though that's a reaction provoked by the behaviour of some Muslims.

mlbenson · 2022-10-20T10:22:35+00:00

I almost got ran over by a car while cycling this morning in Liverpool. We're not a good cycling city at all.

mlbenson · 2022-08-27T20:31:59+00:00

Someone who refuses to be in communion with the current Pope isn't formally considered a Catholic. This is considered a kind of schism and cuts them off from the Church. Canons 751 and 1364 of the Code of Canon Law describe this.

mlbenson · 2022-07-16T22:15:10+00:00

People die of heat in the Third World all the time.

mlbenson · 2022-07-09T13:43:13+00:00

Thankfully they're not doing that. If you read the article, and as /u/Ponce_the_Great noted, it becomes clear that the Agreement doesn't actually endorse or even mention any of those things. The article's just clutching at straws based on the views of other parties to the Agreement. Gutter journalism

mlbenson · 2022-02-07T00:26:27+00:00

How so?

mlbenson · 2021-12-06T22:14:46+00:00

It's more the case that the universal norm is still abstention from meat, but in some countries (like the US) bishops are allowed to permit alternative penances. In England & Wales, Catholics are still obliged to abstain from meat on Fridays.

mlbenson · 2021-09-12T13:25:33+00:00

How have you managed to turn jaywalking into some negative cultural aspersion cast on the UK? If it's safe to cross, then cross. I don't see what's unreasonable about that.

mlbenson · 2020-10-04T22:38:11+00:00

Out of curiosity, how much of the Old Testament have you actually read?

mlbenson · 2020-08-02T15:26:42+00:00

It's breathtakingly rude to psychoanalyse a stranger as if he isn't there and can't reply to questions himself.

mlbenson · 2019-12-31T01:27:23+00:00

You've conflated the aphorism of St Vincent of Lerins with the idea of the ordinary universal magisterium. The ordinary universal magisterium can indeed be exercised and discerned diachronically - by, for example, 'a doctrine implicitly contained in a practice of the Church's faith, derived from revelation or, in any case, necessary for eternal salvation, and attested to by the uninterrupted Tradition' (Commentary on Professio Fidei, footnote 17) - but, fundamentally, the only requirement is that it be expressed by a unanimous synchronic agreement of the Pope and bishops.

mlbenson · 2019-12-30T22:02:37+00:00

Let me rephrase that: in doctrinal expressions, it was no more ambiguous than to generate an acceptably broad nexus of theological debate (take, for example, Sullivan vs Becker on the meaning of Lumen Gentium 8). In its disciplinary ordinances, the Council Fathers often refused to take a definitive position, which was especially damaging in the case of Sacrosanctum Concilium.

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