Last Saturday 24 September, President Dmitri Medvedev of Russia announced that he will be stepping down from office next year to allow his Prime Minister Vladimir Putin a third presidential term. Russia watchers see in this Putin’s desire to prevent substantial reform, and, for that reason, predict the end of the Putin era as well. On the short-term, the Putin-Medvedev shuffle will also affect ecumenical relations, at least, this would not come as a surprise. Continue reading
The word “solidarity” has an interesting history, I learned at the Sozialethik-Symposium: “Solidarität in der Krise” from 28 to 30 April 2011 in Vienna-Mödling. This conference was organised by the Institut für Sozialethik der Katholisch-Theologischen Fakultät (Vienna) and the Vereinigung für katholische Sozialethik in Mitteleuropa. Ever since the Middle Ages, one of the guest speakers explained, solidarity was the individual’s legal responsibility to pay collective debts. It meant, for example, that if two or more business partners had taken out a loan collectively, and one of them would go bankrupt, the remaining partner(s) had to repay the entire sum (“solidum”). Continue reading