The Weekly News In
Review
Newsletter is a
compilation of the news articles that have appeared
on the Understand The Times website during the
previous week.
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August 2 - European fires near record levels
Article: Signs Of The Last Times
New Page 2
Forests
fires that have ravaged southern Europe during the
past month were some of the
worst on record, the
European Commission has said.
More than 3,000 sq km (1,200
sq miles) of forest had
already burned this year, almost as much as in the
whole of 2006, the
commission said.
Firefighters
there are continuing to battle two major fires which
have razed
some 350 sq km (135 sq miles)
of land in the last few
days.
Experts
described the fires on Tenerife and Gran Canaria as
an
environmental catastrophe. Some 20% of forests have
been destroyed, and recovery
is expected to take years.
July 2007 was
one of the worst-ever months on record, according to
figures from the European
Forest Fire Information System, which date back some
20 years.
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August 7 - Universities Install Footbaths to Benefit Muslims
Article: Islam
DEARBORN, Mich. - When pools of water
began accumulating on the floor in
some restrooms at the
University of
Michigan-Dearborn, and the
sinks pulling away from the walls, the
problem was easy to pinpoint. On this
campus, more than 10 percent of the
students are Muslims, and as part of
ritual ablutions required before their five-
times-a-day prayers, some were
washing their feet in the sinks.
The solution seemed straightforward.
After discussions with the Muslim
Students' Association, the university
announced that it would install
$25,000 foot-washing stations in several
restrooms.
But as a legal and political matter, that
solution has not been quite so
simple. When word of the plan got out this
spring, it created instant
controversy, with bloggers going on about
the
Islamification of the university,
students divided on the use of
their building-maintenance fees, and tricky
legal questions about whether
the plan is a legitimate accommodation of
students' right to practice their
religion - or unconstitutional government
support for that religion.
"It's an awkward thing," said Alexis
Oesterle, a junior. "If I'm sitting
with Muslim friends, I wouldn't want to
bring it up. In this country, at
this time, it's not so easy to discuss the
issues of Muslims in American
society."
As the nation's
Muslim population grows, issues of
religious accommodation are becoming
more common, and more complicated.
Many public school districts are grappling
with questions about prayer rooms
for Muslim students, halal food in
cafeterias and scheduling around
important Muslim holidays. As Muslim
students point out, the school calendar
already accommodates Christians, with
Sundays off and vacations around
Christmas and Easter.
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August 7 - Early 2007 saw record-breaking extreme weather: U.N.
Article: Signs Of The Last Times
GENEVA (Reuters) - The world
experienced a series of
record-
breaking weather events in early 2007, from
flooding in Asia to heatwaves in
Europe and snowfall in
South Africa, the
United Nations
weather agency said on Tuesday.
The
World
Meteorological Organization (WMO) said
global land
surface
temperatures in January and April were likely the
warmest since records began in
1880, at
more than 1
degree Celsius higher than average for those
months.
There have also been
severe monsoon floods
across South Asia, abnormally
heavy rains in northern Europe,
China,
Sudan,
Mozambique and
Uruguay, extreme
heatwaves in southeastern Europe and
Russia, and unusual
snowfall in South Africa and South America
this year, the WMO
said.
"The start of the year
2007 was a very active
period in terms of
extreme weather
events," Omar Baddour of the
agency's
World Climate Program told
journalists in
Geneva.
The
Intergovernmental Panel on
Climate Change (IPCC), a U.N. umbrella
group of hundreds of experts,
has noted an
increasing trend in extreme
weather events over the past 50 years and
said irregular patterns are
likely to intensify.
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August 6 - Peace is God's gift that requires human cooperation, pope says
Article: One World Religion
VATICAN CITY
(CNS) - Prayers for peace demonstrate a recognition
that peace is a gift
of God that requires human cooperation, Pope
Benedict XVI said
in a message to a summit of religious leaders
meeting on Mount
Hiei in Japan.
"Peace is both a gift from God and
an obligation for
every
individual," the pope said in the message to the
Aug. 3-4
summit organized by the leader of the Tendai
Buddhist
community.
Members of the
community
consider Mount
Hiei to be the holiest site in Japan; the Tendai
school of
Buddhism was founded on the mountain in the 9th
century.
After the 2001 terrorist attacks in New
York and
Washington, the head of Tendai Buddhism began
inviting
international representatives of Christianity, Islam and
Judaism to join
Japanese religious leaders for the prayer service.
In
his message to the 2007 summit, Pope Benedict
said, "The
world's cry for peace, echoed by families and
communities
throughout the
globe, is at once both a prayer to God and an appeal
to every brother and sister of our human
family."
The pope expressed his hope that
the religious leaders gathered for the
summit
would be filled with
God's peace and strengthened in their resolve
to give witness to
the logic of peace, which surpasses "the
irrationality of
violence."
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August 7 - Denominations Meet for Christian Code on Religious Conversion
Article: Ecumenical Movement - Misc.
With Evangelical and
Pentecostal representatives joining in at
an 8-12 August
consultation in Toulouse, the joint Vatican-
World Council of
Churches study process on religious
conversion gets one step
closer
to its goal of a common code of conduct in seeking
converts to Christianity.|
Intended as an intra-Christian
discussion -
whereas the first
encounter featured participants from different
faiths - the
project's second phase will consist of a high-level
theological
consultation entitled "Towards an ethical
approach to
conversion:
Christian witness in a multi-religious world".
The consultation
will take place at the Institute of Science and
Theology of
Religions (ISTR) in Toulouse, France, from 8-12
August.
At the
consultation,
some 30 Catholic, Orthodox, Protestant,
Pentecostal and
Evangelical theologians and church representatives
will aim to
articulate what a common code of conduct on
religious
conversion should
look like from a Christian
viewpoint.
"Since
there are
many accusations
of 'sheep stealing' among
Christians we will
most likely also focus on this issue. The
consultation in
Toulouse will be the opportunity for doing so",
Ucko
adds.
The three-
year
study project jointly
undertaken by the Pontifical Council for
Interreligious
Dialogue and the WCC's programme on inter-
religious
dialogue and
cooperation bears the name: "An interreligious
reflection on
conversion: From controversy to a shared code of
conduct". It
was launched in May 2006 in Lariano/Velletri, near
Rome, and aims to produce a code of
conduct on
religious
conversion commonly agreed among Christians by
2010.
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August 8 - African fossils paint new picture of human evolution
Article: Creation/Evolution - Misc.
WASHINGTON (AP) -
Surprising research based on two African
fossils suggests our family tree is more
like a wayward bush with stubby
branches, challenging what had been
common thinking on how early humans
evolved.
The discovery by Meave Leakey, a
member of a famous family of
paleontologists, shows that two species of
early human ancestors lived at
the same time in
Kenya. That pokes holes in the
chief theory of man's early evolution:
that one of those species evolved from the
other.
And it further discredits that iconic
illustration of human evolution
that begins with a knuckle-dragging ape
and ends with a briefcase-carrying
man.
The old theory is that the first and
oldest species in our family tree,
Homo habilis, evolved into Homo erectus,
which then became human, Homo
sapiens. But Leakey's find suggests those
two earlier species lived
side-by-side about 1.5 million years ago in
parts of Kenya for at least half
a million years. She and her research
colleagues report the discovery in a
paper published in Thursday's journal
Nature.
The paper is based on fossilized
bones found in 2000. The complete skull
of Homo erectus was found within walking
distance of an upper jaw of Homo
habilis, and both dated from the same
general time period. That makes it
unlikely that Homo erectus evolved from
Homo habilis, researchers said.
It's the equivalent of finding that your
grandmother and
great-grandmother were sisters rather
than mother and daughter, said study
co-author Fred Spoor, a professor of
evolutionary anatomy at the University
College in
London.
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August 10 - Statue of Our Lady of America comes to St. Louis
Article: Roman Catholic Church And The Last Days
The official image of Our Lady of America,
which stems from apparitions of
the Blessed Mother received by an Ohio
woman religious, is on display at the
Old Cathedral.
The 9-foot statue of Our Lady of America,
which includes its base, was first
publicly displayed at the U.S. bishops'
meeting in Baltimore last November,
where Archbishop Raymond L. Burke
blessed it.
Our Lady of
America's ultimate request, however, was
to have a statue in her name to be
enshrined in the National Shrine of the
Immaculate Conception. She indicated
that the shrine was to be a place for
pilgrims and a special safeguard for the
country.
Al Langsenkamp, an Indianapolis-based
volunteer with the Our Lady of America
Center in Fostoria, Ohio, said that request
has not yet been fulfilled,
partly because of the death of Archbishop
Leibold in 1972 and a general
unawareness today of the devotion.
"I think in his passing, the devotion
remained with a relatively small group
of the faithful," said Langsenkamp.
"The bishops for the most part have not
fulfilled the request, because it was not
widely known to them. In (Our
Lady's) messages, she asks that the
bishops do this."
"The devotion has received a very
warm welcome from the bishops as they
become aware of it," he continued.
One of those bishops is Archbishop
Burke, who wrote a letter to his fellow
bishops last May on the status of Our Lady
of America.
Archbishop Burke wrote that he was able
to confirm that the devotion had
been approved by Archbishop Leibold and
actively promoted by him. Over the
years, other bishops have approved the
devotion, according to Archbishop
Burke, and have publicly participated in the
devotion to Our Lady of
America.
"Although the devotion to Our Lady of
America has remained constant over the
years, in recent years, the devotion has
spread very much and has been
embraced by many with special
fervor," he wrote. "Our
Lady of America calls the people of our
nation to the new evangelization through
a renewed dedication to purity in
love."
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August 11 - Lutherans to allow pastors in gay relationships
Article: Signs Of The Last Times
Clergy members who are in homosexual
relationships will be able to serve as
pastors, the largest U.S. Lutheran body
said Saturday.
The Evangelical
Lutheran Church in America passed a
resolution at its annual assembly urging
bishops to refrain from disciplining
pastors who are in "faithful committed
same-gender relationships."
The resolution passed by a
vote of 538-431.
"The Church ... has just
said, 'Do not do punishments,'" said Phil
Soucy, spokesman for Lutherans
Concerned, a gay-lesbian rights group
within the church. "That is huge."
The ELCA, which has 4.8
million members, had previously allowed
gays to serve as pastors so long as
they abstained from sexual relations.
The conference also
instructed a committee that is developing
a social statement on sexuality to
further investigate the issue. The
committee is scheduled to release its
report in 2009.
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We hope the Weekly News In Review has been a
blessing to you.
In Jesus,
Roger Oakland
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