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The “Asian Way,” an approach which emphasizes the dominant value of harmony in all of life’s relationships, seeks this harmony with one’s self, fellow humans, creation, and God. From this basis, faith-based alliances can be forged to raise a collective interreligious voice to bring about peace, justice, and reconciliation.
A century before Vasco da Gama, a forgotten navigator of Arabian descent, “almost” discovered the ocean route to the West, at the service of the Emperor of China. Admiral Zheng He’s boats were also the carriers of Chinese goods all over. If the voyages had not suddenly stopped, the world’s history could have been quite different. Curiously, exactly like the Europeans, the Chinese were trying to challenge the trade monopoly of the Arabs.
During many centuries, the treasures of Asia reached Europe through the long and dangerous Silk Road. When the Portuguese started the sea voyages that ended in the discovery of the ocean route to the East, what were before rare and very expensive goods became a fashion and a fever all around the European continent. Described by historians as the first step in the world globalization, this historical mark had winners and losers: the riches and the knowledge of the East helped the West to build empires and rule the world, while Asian potentates became weaker and weaker.
By demonstrating that climate change compromises basic human rights and halts socioeconomic development, the Maldives hopes to instill a moral and ethical imperative for the international community to take substantial action against it. For 20 years, they have been warning that island-states are especially vulnerable to the effects of global warming.
Tourism is a major source of revenue and employment, particularly for the developing nations of the world. But climate change and global warming are risking to dry up the source, mainly in Asia, Africa and Latin America. The crisis is considered so serious that it is the theme of the UN international meeting that will take place at the end of the month in Peru.
Waseda University in Tokyo is opening Japan’s first graduate school of journalism. The school’s program was patterned largely upon that of Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism, in New York (U.S.A.), and similar programs in other schools overseas.
Even recognizing the contribution mass media make to the modern world, Benedict XVI pointed some dangers of their sometimes unrestricted power. And warned: “The media can also present and support models of development which serve to increase rather than reduce the technological divide between rich and poor countries.”
Catholic media – even when they have a wider circulation than secular media – do not seem to have a great impact on society at a larger scale. Why? The answer is simple. Much too often, our media speak to the Church, forgetting to evangelize society. There is plenty to do to reach people where it counts: in their mentality, in their social attitudes, in offering possible alternatives enlightened by the Gospel.
Information is everywhere − at our homes or in the streets; in traditional newspapers and magazines, in television and radio, in the ads or in the web, in our PC’s, laptops or even mobile phones. For the first time in history, we all live in a “global village” where, wherever we are, we can follow a war in the East, an election in the West or a storm or a flood in the South. Almost at the same moment they are happening.
Inculturation is often understood as a process related only with liturgy or a sort of “cosmetic folklore.” But, really, it is an inevitable personal process. Each person is a microcosm. In each one of us, there is a unique interpretation of faith, unique inculturation of the inexhaustible fullness of God in Christ under the guidance of the Holy Spirit.
