Quotes from James A. Connor

in 1620 Kepler's mother was being tried for witchcraft.

Kepler was, as author Arthur Koestler called him, the "watershed" where the medieval world finally gave way to the modern.

My conscience commands me to love an enemy and not harm him, to avoid adding new causes for separation; it tells me that I ought to be an example of moderation and mildness for my enemy; perhaps through my actions, I might encourage him to do the same, and then at last may God send us the dear desired peace."8 For

I would not have thought," he wrote to Mästlin, "that it could be so sweet, in union with my brothers, to suffer injury for religion, to abandon house, fields, friends, and nation. If real martyrdom is like this, to lay down one's life, our exultation is so much the greater, the greater the loss, and it is an easy matter to die for faith."23

Subtly, in any organization, religious or otherwise, solidarity becomes ossification, the faith becomes orthodoxy, and compliance becomes more important than conversion of spirit. By the time of the Reformation, Christianity had gotten to the point where authority itself had become the problem. To

The very nature of human organizations creates orthodoxy, and orthodoxies, in turn, give birth to reformers and mavericks, men such as Luther and Kepler.

Truthfully I may confess that as often as I contemplate the proper order, as one results from another and becomes diminished, it is as if I have read a heavenly passage not written in meaningful letters but with the essential things in this world which tells me: Put your reason herein to comprehend these things. JOHANNES KEPLER, IN HIS CALENDAR FOR 1604

Giovanni de' Medici

As the two wardens looked on, the jailer shackled the old woman to an iron band with

tripping over their own piety. In some secret, unlit room in the human soul, they all wanted war.

King, Gandhi, and Kepler become great because they make choices full of moral courage.

Piazza del Campidoglio

Jan Hus. Kepler was part of the funeral

Friedrich Wilhelm Bessel

Arch of Titus, down the Via

shrine of Loreto.

No one, he believed, should abuse the faith by slandering others for their beliefs.