Stevan Mandarich

Stevan Mandarich, 90, a retired Navy rear admiral and decorated combat veteran of World War II who lived in Washington until the early 1980s, died Dec. 6 in Niagara Falls, Ontario, in a retirement home where he was being treated for Alzheimer's disease.

Adm. Mandarich, who was born in Arizona and raised in California, was a 1933 graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy at Annapolis. In the early days of World War II, he flew from the carrier Wasp in the Atlantic. Later in the war, he flew a Hellcat in the battle for Tarawa and commanded an air group on the carrier Lexington. Along the way, he received the Distinguished Flying Cross and three awards of the Air Medal.

The Meaning of Reality

Essays on Existence and Communion, Eros and History

by Christos Yannaras

The collection of articles traces the thought of Christos Yanaras through his long journey in discovering the meaning of existence, communion, eros, and history. It is a cause of immense joy that no fewer than twenty articles of passionate significance and substance have at present been gathered together in this volume under the title The Meaning of Reality.

Yannaras is undoubtedly one of the most significant thinkers of our time. Kallistos Ware once described him as "the most creative and prophetic religious thinker at work in Greece today," while Rowan Williams characterizes him as "one of the most significant Christian philosophers in Europe." His very wide and no less deep education helps him to develop an inimitable blend of philosophy, theology, and social criticism, and to speak in an original way about the traditional and contemporary issues of human existence, as well as the latest challenges of modern empirical science and political engagement. A detailed knowledge of the writings of the Holy Fathers has always been his foundation amidst the labyrinth of modern thought - which is inimately bound up with psychoanalysis, environmental issues, human rights, postmodernism, and pluralism , to mention just a few. Insistence on the primacy, uniqueness, and eternal value of human personality prevails in almost all his works and inspires his own vigorous theological and ecumenical engagement, based on the Orthodox eucharistic and ascetic tradition.

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