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Commentary and links to news of the wonderful, weird, interesting and cutting edge through the lens of our Catholic faith. Updated daily by Our Sunday Visitor staff. Email us with question or comments or link suggestions: feedback@osv.com.
Breitbart
Seven people were injured Thursday when Greek Orthodox and Armenian priests came to blows in a dispute over how to clean the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem. After Christmas celebrations, Greek Orthodox priests set up ladders to clean the walls and ceilings of their part of the church, which is built over the site where Jesus Christ is believed to have been born. But the ladders encroached on space controlled by Armenian priests, according to photographers who said angry words ensued and blows quickly followed. The Church of the Nativity, like the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem's Old City, is shared by various branches of Christianity, each of which controls and jealously guards a part of the holy site. More info>
MercatorNet
The central idea of Christmas — that God became man — has had an enormous impact upon Western art. The significance of this idea becomes apparent when we sketch the ways in which divinity was imagined in the two traditions which fed into Western Christianity: classical paganism, which portrayed Gods as superpowerful people, and Judaism, which was suspicious of representing God as being a particular way because of his omnipotence. The idea of the incarnation put these two strands of thought together — God becomes a physical being, while also (somehow) remaining abstract and eternal. More info>
AsiaNews
The presses stopped Christmas Day at Russia’s only Catholic magazine, Svet Evangelia. For almost 14 years the magazine spoke about the religious situation across Russia, defending freedom and justice, becoming a point ...
The Chicago Tribune
When Sister Kathleen Treanor's soul ascends to heaven, her brain will go to a less ethereal realm: a medical lab in Kentucky. Two decades ago, Sister Treanor and 677 other members of the School Sisters of Notre Dame granted a young researcher's request to test them each year in order to track the progression of Alzheimer's disease and other age-related brain disorders. The 61 surviving nuns recently completed their last round of intellectual and physical tests for the Nun Study, one of the world's most comprehensive neurological research projects. More info>
The New York Times
Even as many Catholic churches and schools in other parts of New York City have been shuttered in recent years because of dwindling membership, Transfiguration Church in Chinatown has continued to evolve and flourish. The church baptizes more than three dozen adults, almost all Chinese, each Easter. It celebrates Masses in three languages, drawing 800 to 900 people each Sunday. Its school?s kindergarten class has a waiting list 150 names long. More info>
MSNBC.com
As the trend of people saying they are spiritual but not religious grows, more couples are opting for ?baby blessings? rather than the traditional church baptisms or christenings. Their rise in popularity may be driven in part by some members of the post-baby boomer generation who have bypassed religious institutions and are experimenting in ways that make sense to them spiritually, said Ri ...
Reuters
Rising Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee risked his standing with Catholic voters on Sunday by courting his evangelical base at the church of John Hagee, a controversial preacher accused of disparaging Catholics. While the Catholic League for Civil and Religious Rights says Hagee is virulently anti-Catholic, Huckabee’s campaign insisted the visit should not be seen as a slight to Catholics. "Three members of the senior leadership of the campaign are Catholic, including our national chairman. Gov. Huckabee is committed to being a leader of all Americans," said Charmaine Yoest, one of his senior advisers. More info>
BBC News
A curfew has been imposed in parts of the eastern Indian state of Orissa after Hindu hardliners attacked up to a dozen Christian churches, police say. One person was killed and more than two dozen were injured in the violence that erupted during a dispute over Christmas celebrations. More info>
The Washington Post
Pope Benedict said today that Christians faced persecution, torture and death in some parts of the world and continued to be made martyrs for their faith. In a message to pilgrims on the day after Christmas — the feast day of St. Stephen, considered the first Christian martyr — the Pope said Christians who die for their faith pray for forgiveness for their killers. “We should always note that this is a distinctive characteristic of the Christian martyr — it is exclusively an act of love, toward God and towards men, including the persecutors," he told crowds in a rainy St. Peter's Square.
A Brazilian Roman Catholic bishop on a hunger strike for 23 days to protest against an irrigation project ended his fast on Thursday after President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva said construction will go forward. Bishop Luiz Cappio, hospitalized since Wednesday, "decided to interrupt the fasting, but not the fight," said Adriano Martins, an assistant to the bishop. The 61-year-old cleric began the hunger strike on Nov. 27 in a bid to block the project that he and other critics say is too expensive and would benefit wealthy landowners more than poor peasants. Environmentalists fear reducing the river's level could affect navigability, fish migration and biodiversity. More info>
The St. Louis Post-Dispatch
Pastor Clyde Crumpton of St. Louis says he knows a path that will lead his community out of poverty: a walk down the wedding aisle to a happily-ever-after that has eluded many of the nation's African-Americans. Last year, two St. Louis nonprofits, Better Family Life and St. Louis Healthy Marriage Coalition, were awarded more than $11 million in grants from the federal Healthy Marriage Initiative to build a rank of marriage educators such as Crumpton to conduct ongoing courses on healthy relationships. The courses are targeted at residents of the city and poor, inner-ring suburbs. With about 50 percent of all marriages ending in divorce in this country and the rate of births by unmarried women at about 37 percent nationally, marriage is gaining strong currency among sociologists and other researchers: Happily married people on average live longer, build more wealth and raise children more likely to graduate from college, according to the Coalition for Marriage, Family and Couples Education. More info>
The International Herald Tribune
A priest who was stabbed in Turkey last weekend has been released from the hospital. The stabbing of the Italian priest, Adriano Franchini, was the latest in a string of attacks on Christians in Turkey. On Wednesday, a prosecutor charged a 19-year-old man with stabbing and wounding with a knife. No trial date has been set yet. More info>
Time magazine
Every child is a gift, as the saying goes. But in a case that has stoked outrage on two continents, a Dutch diplomat posted in Hong Kong has been accused of returning his 8-year-old adopted daughter, who suffers from an emotional disorder found in some adoptees. While uncommon, it is not unprecedented for an adoption to fail and a child to be returned to foster care. More info>
The Catholic Sentinel
A Grinch struck the Springfield Community Service Center, owned by Catholic Community Services in Eugene, Ore., stealing gifts intended for 40 low-income families, along with the center’s Young Parents Program and Latino Housing Program. Word quickly got out regarding the theft and the community response was overwhelming: cash, checks, clothing and other gifts started flowing into the agency the next day, and continue to arrive. More info>
The Guardian
A growing number of Catholic churches in the United Kingdom are cancelling midnight mass and holding Christmas Eve services earlier in the evening due to fears of disruption from drunken revelers. Clergy are also concerned about worshippers trying to make their way home in the face of the threat of street violence and drunken driving. More info>
Uruguay's congress has approved a bill which would allow civil unions for both gay and unmarried straight couples. It is the first country in Roman Catholic-dominated Latin America to approve such a measure nationwide. Several cities across Latin America, including Buenos Aires and Mexico City, have recently adopted similar measures. More info>
The Los Angeles Times
David Gonzales, creator of the popular "Homies" figurines, has been featured in national magazines and has made millions through his toys. However, thanks to his brother, Father Masseo Gonzales, he knows that he has a higher responsibility to use his talents for good. That's why he has helped his brother's online ministry and created "Santos," a line of figurines of saints and religious figures, such as Our Lady of Guadalupe and Pope John Paul II. (Our Sunday Visitor profiled Father Masseo and his El Padrecito's Online Church in its May 22, 2005 issue.) More info>
International Herald Tribune
Demonstrators held vigils across Brazil on Monday to protest a river diversion project opposed by Bishop Luis Flavio Cappio. Cappio has been on a hunger strike since Nov. 27, hoping to stop a $2 billion project to divert Brazil's fourth largest river, the Sao Francisco. The government contends that the project is needed to irrigate Brazil's arid northeast and will benefit about 12 million people. Critics say it will cause irreversible environmental damage and mainly benefit large agribusiness. More info here»
As the book business goes, Amity Printing is not unusually prolific. In the last 20 years it has printed some 50 million books; some publishers churn out that many in a year. But Amity focuses on one title — the Bible — and primarily one market, China. Amity has churned out 41 million Bibles for Chinese believers at its plant outside the southern city of Nanjing. For a country whose religious oppression tends to make more international headlines than its exhibitions of tolerance, that stands as a significant achievement. But it also highlights the gap between China's officially sanctioned churches and the illegal "house" churches that exist outside the limited sphere of religious freedom in China. More info here»
Busted Halo
Greg Ruehlmann, a self-proclaimed “Scrooge in reverse,” recalls how a TV classic helps him get over the commercialization of Christmas. Charles Schulz’s beloved “A Charlie Brown Christmas,” which follows the antics of the “Peanuts” gang as they prepare to put on a Christmas play, radiates with warmth and serves as a reminder to all ...
Pope Benedict XVI warned Sunday against seeking happiness in drugs and the self-centered quest for "pleasure at all costs." Instead, the pope held up Blessed Teresa of Calcutta, who devoted her life to serving the poor in India and elsewhere, as an example. "Every day, she lived next to misery, human degradation and death," the pope told thousands of faithful gathered in St. Peter's Square during the noon Angelus. "Yet, she offered the smile of God to everybody." More info>
The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation underwrites, inspires or directs major efforts to prevent, cure or treat AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria in Africa. An extensive Los Angeles Times investigation found, however, that the programs funded by the foundation have mixed influences on societal health and the specific focus on the three diseases has disrupted health care for other illnesses. More info>
Italian film and opera director Franco Zeffirelli, director of “Romeo and Juliet” and “Jesus of Nazareth,” is offering to help Pope Benedict XVI create a “happy image.” "Coming after a media-savvy pope like John Paul II is a difficult task ... Benedict XVI still communicates coldly, in a way that is not suited with what is hap ...
Catholic News Service
Boston Cardinal Sean P. O'Malley has opened the bicentennial year of the Archdiocese of Boston by asking all Catholics who have left the Church, for whatever reason, to "come home." The cardinal made the invitation during his homily for the first Sunday of Advent at the Cathedral of the Holy Cross: "Noah's ark may have sprung a leak, but it is not sinking, and Christ is the captain. To our brothers and sisters in the life rafts, I say, 'We love you, we want you to return to the practice of the faith, to the faith of our ancestors, the faith of the saints, the faith of the apostles.'" More info here»
The Economist
Genetic testing may lead to many moral dilemmas, including the possible encouragement of aborting less-than-perfect children and using someone's genetic profile to deny insurance coverge. Now, just like many other growing industries, fraud is becoming an issue. The U.S. Government Accountability Office said that genetic tests it had bought from four websites misled consumers into thinking they were at risk of ailments such as heart disease, osteoporosis and type 2 (late onset) diabetes, and thereby tricked them into buying ?personalised supplements? that were actually no better than ordinary vitamins, but at a cost of more than $1,000 a year. Yes, part of the problem is outright fraud, but another issue may be the science. More info here»
The Vatican, which has been accused of aggressively seeking souls in Russia and some other countries, said Friday it has every right to spread its message and accept converts. Evangelisation, the document said, was "an inalienable right and duty, an expression of religious liberty." But the Church also ...
The Daily Mail
In his World Peace Day message Jan. 1, Pope Benedict XVI will remind the faithful that any solutions to global warming must be based on solid science, not dogma of the environmental movement. "Humanity today is rightly concerned about the ecological balance of tomorrow," he said in the message titled "The Human Family, A Community of Peace." "It is important for assessments in this regard to be carried out prudently, in dialogue with experts and people of wisdom, uninhibited by ideological pressure to draw hasty conclusions, and above all with the aim of reaching agreement on a model of sustainable development capable of ensuring the well-being of all while respecting environmental balances." More info>
Americans often feel the desire to give to charities this time of year and, increasingly, retailers help them out by building a donation into the purchase of items such as scarves or jewelry. Consumers who think they are doing a good thing might want to watch out, though, because nonprofit experts warn that such giving is unregulated and, in most cases, unaccountable — and no one knows who, if anyone, is claiming a tax deduction for it. “It’s virtuousness as a marketing gimmick run amok,” Lucy Bernholz, founder and president of Blueprint Research and Design, a consulting firm for nonprofit organizations, told The New York Times. More info>
The Canadian Press
A judge in southern Chile has sentenced a Catholic priest to recite seven psalms daily during three mont ...