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“Christianity is a religion of joy where there’s much room for wit, jokes, pranks, laughter, fun and amusement. ‘Joy is the infallible sign of the presence of God,’ said JesuitTeilhard de Chardin.”
At a time when most conventional fuels cast ever longer shadows of unintended consequences, algae – that lowly pond scum – offers a pleasant surprise: a near-term, low-tech alternative with apparently few of the hidden costs of more elaborate, expensive and exploitive energy sources, writes Mark Sommer.* The first, simplest, and fastest-growing life form, algae holds unheralded promise to become a pivotal resource for the planet’s future as the basis for a high-quality biodiesel that doesn’t (like corn) siphon food from humans. And it’s not just a fuel. It’s animal feed, human food (think spirulina), and the building block for a wide range of biodegradable bio-plastics to replace petroleum-based plastics. And algae does all this as it grows by absorbing enormous amounts of CO2 – the very greenhouse gas we most urgently need to reduce.
Significant progress has been made in the Philippines against the use of child soldiers committed by rebel groups, but the problem still persists.
The Christians in India are on the frontline in the war against corruption, which is involving large sectors of Indian civil society. At institutional and federal levels, the bishops are actively involved in the current national debate to approve a specific anti-corruption law called the “Lokpal Bill.”
The annual number of stillbirths in the whole world is twice the number of people who die from diseases associated with HIV. According to the weekly science magazine, The Lancet, about 2.64 million fetuses die after the twenty-eighth week of pregnancy, mainly in low and middle-income countries. The main causes are birth complications, maternal infections during pregnancy, disorders such as hypertension and diabetes, fetal growth restriction and congenital anomalies. According to experts, more attention to prenatal care would be sufficient to deal with this social plague.
A survey found that the majority of Americans believe that capitalism is not compatible with Christian values. The survey, conducted by the Public Religion Research Institute in partnership with Religion News Service, found that 44% of Americans expressed the belief that the two are at odds, while 36% asserted that capitalism is consistent with Christian values.
At least 249 women were killed in 2010 for their dowry, this according to the Bangladesh Society for the Enforcement of Human Rights (BSEHR). Whether out of anger or for vengeance, husbands often beat their wives or set them on fire with kerosene, sometimes with the complicity of their families. In some cases, women are strangled and then hanged to simulate a suicide. The figures are incomplete though because many cases are not reported. In fact, if in 2007, there were 145 recorded cases, dropping to 114 in 2008 and 109 in 2009, the numbers last year showed a marked reversal. At the same time, the BSEHR also reported that, last year, at least 122 women were tortured.
A report released by the International Labor Organization (ILO) for the Fourth Conference on the Least Developed Countries (LDCs) that took place in Istanbul, Turkey in early May expressed a strong critique of the snail’s pace of development. The report, entitled “Growth, Employment and Decent Work in the Least Developed Countries,” solidified widespread fears that the “graduation” rate of LDCs was abysmally low, with only three countries out of 51 – the Maldives, Botswana and Cape Verde – moving out of the category since it was created by the United Nations in 1970.
In the past, the ascetic tradition of various religions seemed to be motivated by a denial of the value of the world. Often, salvation was presented as removing humans from the natural world, as if somehow matter itself was tainted, and could not, in any way, be associated with the world of the spirit. Manichaeism depicted the world as radically deficient and that even the human body is somehow evil. While many of the Fathers of the Church, including St. Augustine, opposed Manichaeism, they were not always enthusiastic about the natural world or even the human body.
The Comboni Missionaries have just celebrated the 20th anniversary of their arrival in China.
There are only a dozen of them working in Macau and in the disputed territory of Taiwan, from where they reach out to the Mainland. In the words of their General Superior, they are like a little bit of yeast which ferments the dough – to help people grow and be witnesses of the beauty of having a Christian life. Even if they are few and working in an immense and populous country whose people are very proud of their own traditions.
