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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November 19 - Bangladesh cyclone death toll hits 15,000
Article: Signs Of The Last Times
Up to 15,000
people were killed and seven
million lives left devastated by the
cyclone in Bangladesh last
week, aid agencies have said as the
full extent of the disaster
became clear.
The
Bangladeshi Red Crescent Society, the country's
main humanitarian group,
said that more than 3,000
bodies had already been
recovered from villages shattered by Cyclone
Sidr's 150mph
winds.
In the worst affected districts,
90 per cent of homes and 95
per cent of rice crops and valuable prawn
farms were obliterated by the
winds, which generated a 20ft tidal surge
that swept everything from its
path.
Officials
described the humanitarian situation in
coastal districts like Barguna,
130 miles south of the capital Dhaka,
as the
"worst in decades", a grave assertion in a
country that is used to dealing
with annual floods and storms.
"I have never seen such a
catastrophe in my 20 years as
a government administrator," said
Harisprasad Pal, an official
from Barguna District,
"Village after village has been
shattered.
Millions of people are living out
in the open and relief is reaching
less than one percent of the
people."
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November 18 - Natural disasters and human tragedies do not mean the end of the world, says Pope
Article: Roman Catholic Church And The Last Days
Vatican
City, Nov
18, 2007 / 10:13
am (CNA)
.-
With thousands of
faithful gathered in St. Peter's Square for the
Angelus prayer
today, Pope Benedict XVI
rejected the
"recurring messianisms" that are
continually announcing
the imminent end
the world. He explained that "history is ongoing,
and involves
human tragedies and natural calamities."
Reflecting on
the Gospel reading for this Sunday, the Holy Father
recalled that, since
its inception, the Church
"prayerfully
lives in the care of its Lord, scrutinizing the signs
of the times and
keeping the faithful on guard against the calls of
messianisms,
which from time to time announce the imminent end
of
the world ".
"Actually,
the Pontiff said, history must
take its course,
which also involves human tragedies and natural
calamities. As time
develops, the design of salvation that Christ
has already taken
effect in his incarnation, death and resurrection
[becomes
clearer]. This mystery is continually
announced
by the Church and
actualized in her preaching, with the celebration
of the sacraments
and the testimony of charity. "
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November 23 - Christian Leaders Invite Muslims to Love God, Neighbors Together
Article: Ecumenical Movement - Christianity Uniting with other Religions
Christian
leaders across denominational
lines responded to the unprecedented
open letter signed last month by 138
representative Muslim leaders with their
own letter,
calling on the two Abrahamic faiths to love
God and neighbors
together.
Over 100 theologians,
ministry leaders, and prominent pastors
have thus far signed the response
letter issued by the Yale Center for
Faith and Culture.
Signers include Jim
Wallis, president of Sojourners; Rick
Warren, founder and senior pastor of
Saddleback Church; John Stott, rector
emeritus of All Souls Church in
London;
and Leith Anderson, president of the
National Association of
Evangelicals.
The
Christian signatories said they
"share the
sentiments" of the Muslim leaders who
pointed out that Muslims and Christians
make up over half of the world'
population and therefore true peace
cannot occur as long as conflict
persists between the two religious
communities.
"If we can achieve religious
peace between these two religious
communities, peace in the world will
clearly be easier to
attain."
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November 25 - Ahmadinejad says Annapolis useless
Article: Wars And Rumors of Wars
President
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said Sunday that
this
week's Annapolis peace conference would only
serve Israel, the official
Islamic Republic News Agency reported.
"The peace conference has no
benefit for the
oppressed Palestinian nation.
It is only for supporting the Zionists
occupiers,"
Ahmadinejad said, according to the agency.
"Participation in this summit is
an indication
of the lack of intelligence of
some so-called politicians,"
he
said, accusing the participants of
giving concessions to the
"Zionists."
"I am sorry that some people
around us plan to
participate in the conference,
which like its previous ones will not
have any benefit,"
Ahmadinejad added, apparently referring to his
Arab neighbors who
announced their readiness to attend the conference
on
Friday.
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November 26 - Tony Blair: Mention God and you're a 'nutter'
Article: Misc.
Tony Blair has sparked
controversy by claiming that people who speak about
their religious faith can be viewed by
society as "nutters".
The
former prime minister's comments came
as he admitted for the first time that his faith was
"hugely important" in
influencing his decisions during his decade in power
at Number 10, including going to war with
Iraq in 2003.
Mr Blair
complained that
he had been unable
to follow the example of US
politicians, such as President George W.
Bush, in being open about his faith
because people in Britain regarded
religion with suspicion.
Even
Alastair Campbell - his former
communications director who once said,
"We don't do
God" - has conceded that Mr Blair's
Christian faith played a central role in
shaping "what he felt was
important".
Mr
Campbell, in the same TV programme as Mr
Blair, said the
British public were "a bit wary of
politicians who go on about
God".
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November 26 - Rise of Pentecostalism Spurs Call for Catholic 'Self-Examination'
Article: Roman Catholic Church And The Last Days
Comment from
Understand The Times:
Based on our research, Understand The
Times
predicts that
the ecumenical movement will be soon based on a
so-
called "outpouring of the Holy Spirit."
Many Roman Catholics are
calling for a
"Second Pentecost." Sounds good does it
not. Of
course, the
charismatic movement based on Latter Rain theology
also
promotes a great
outpouring that will establish the kingdom.
It
can be documented that the Roman Catholic
view is
that
this "Second Pentecost" occurs
when the "spirit" is poured out
through
"Mary," also known as the Queen of
Heaven. This is
unbiblical, and in
our view, out of the pit of hell.
Also, it is important to note that the Roman
Catholic
Church
and many in
the Charismatic movement portray
the dove as a
symbol of the
"Holy Spirit."
Roger Oakland has traveled the world
and has
photographs that
he has taken in many Roman Catholic churches. In
fact he was just in
Rome and took a number of pictures which
document that in
Roman Catholic churches the "dove" is
found in two
places - over
"Mary" the "mother of the
Eucharist" or two, over the
"Eucharistic
Jesus."
If the dove was really
representing the Holy
Spirit, the
dove would be overtop the empty cross. In the Bible,
the
Holy Spirit always
points to Jesus Christ and the finished work of
the
cross.
The following article illustrates how the
"dove"
will
soon be a unifying factor to bring together the religions
of the
world in the name of Jesus.
The Vatican's top official on
relations with non-Catholic Christians has
called upon the Catholic
Church to critically
self-examine itself in
response to the "exponential" rise of
Pentecostal
movements.
"We must not ask first what is
wrong with the
Pentecostals but ask what our
pastoral failings are and come to a
spiritual renewal,"
the ecumenical leader said Friday, according
to Agence France
Presse. Earlier in May, on a trip to Brazil, Pope
Benedict XVI, much to the
offense of some,
described Pentecostal
churches as "sects" and said that they
used
aggressive tactics to win
souls. In Brazil alone, Roman Catholics
used to account for about 90
percent of the population in the 1960s; by
2005, it was down to 67
percent, the Associated Press noted.
The
Vatican has been increasingly lamenting the
rise of Protestant evangelical
communities in Latin America, Africa and
elsewhere, and the resulting
flight of Catholics
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November 27 - Anti-Christian Persecution in India Hits New High
Article: Misc.
At least four cases of
Christian persecution in
India
were reported in the average week this
year, according
to statistics recently revealed by the
president of the All India Catholic
Union and others actively monitoring the
situation.
AICU
leader Dr. John Dayal, who is also a
renowned journalist and member of the
National Integration Council, said the
statistics gathered from Jan. 1 to Nov. 16
show that
the number
of atrocities against Christians
this year, 190, has surpassed the marks
of recent years.
The
victims include members of almost
every
church denomination in the
country - Catholics, Protestants, and
Evangelicals. They include priests,
nuns, pastors, wives of pastors, believers,
seminarians and Bible school
students, and lay
persons.
Violence includes
attempted
murder, armed assault, sexual
molestation, illegal confinement and
grievous injury.
Most
recently,
a pastor
and members of his church in Eastern
India were reportedly attacked and beaten
by Hindu radicals with the aid of
police
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November 27 - Bishop of Orlando reflects on impact of globalization and secularization
Article: One World Relgion
Though
echoing Pope John Paul II's advice that
globalization itself is
"neither all light nor is it all
shadow," he said the
ancient
Greek attempt to forcibly assimilate the Jews was in
some
ways similar to present-day globalizing
trends.
But in Bishop Wenski's view, a world that
lives
as if
God does not matter ends up undermining
itself. In the
mystery of the Incarnation, God has
become man.
This means that He is one of us and
one
with
us. Thus, if society ignores God then it also is ignoring
man, Wenski said. The
bishop cited John Paul II's
statement in Ecclesia in America,
"Jesus Christ is the human
face of
God and the divine face of man."
Christians must model
a life in which God
matters, and
because God matters man must
matter
as well. Both Christian witness and human
flourishing,
Bishop
Wenski said, necessarily requires work for
justice
and
peace.
At the close of his
homily the bishop thanked
conference attendees for their Christian
witness and prayed that
the
Eucharist sustain everyone working for the progress
of
people.
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November 28 - Iran's Ahmadinejad terms Mideast peace confab 'failure'
Article: Wars And Rumors Of Wars
TEHRAN, Nov. 28
(AP) - (Kyodo)-Iranian President Mahmoud
Ahmadinejad charged Wednesday
the
current Middle East peace
conference in the United States is a
"failure" and Israel is headed for
"collapse."
"It is impossible that the
Zionist regime
will survive. Collapse is in the nature of
this regime because it has been
created on aggression, lying, oppression
and crime,"
Ahmadinejad said.
Speaking to IRNA, the country's
national news agency, at the end of a
Cabinet session, Ahmadinejad said:
"Even the most unintelligent
people
from the
political point
of view will soon understand that the
Annapolis conference was already a
failure."
"When the real
representatives of the Palestinian nation
and the resistance groups were not
attending the conference and in addition to
that the rights, votes, and
demands of the Palestinian nation were
not recognized, hundreds of such
meetings would be futile,"
the
Iranian
president
added, according to IRNA.
Referring to a telephone conversation
with Saudi King Abdullah, Ahmadinejad
said,
" (The
Saudi King) said that they neither
recognized Israel nor would let the
Palestinian right be violated (at the
conference)."
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November 29 - World faces "cyber cold war" threat
Article: Wars And Rumors Of Wars
LONDON
(Reuters) - A
"cyber cold war" waged over
the world's computers threatens to become one of
the biggest threats to security in the next
decade, according to a
report published on Thursday.
About 120 countries are
developing ways to use the Internet as a
weapon to target financial markets,
government computer systems and
utilities, Internet
security company
McAfee said in an annual
report.
Intelligence
agencies already routinely test
other states' networks looking for
weaknesses and their techniques are
growing more sophisticated every
year, it said.
"Cybercrime is now a
global issue," said
Jeff Green, senior vice president of
McAfee Avert Labs. "It has
evolved significantly and is no longer just
a threat to industry and
individuals but increasingly to national
security."
The report
said
China is at the forefront of the
cyber war. It said China has been
blamed for attacks in the United States,
India and
Germany.
"The complexity and coordination seen
was new," the report quoted an
unnamed NATO source as saying.
"There were a series of attacks
with careful
timing using different techniques and
specific targets."
EU
Information Society commissioner
Viviane Reding said in June that what
happened in Estonia was a wake-up
call. NATO said "urgent work"
was
needed to improve
defenses.
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November 29 - Pope's Response to Muslim Scholars' Letter
Article: Other Religions Uniting With Roman Catholics
VATICAN
CITY, NOV. 29, 2007 (Zenit.org).-
Here is Benedict XVI's
response to the open letter that 138 Muslims
scholars addressed to the
Holy Father and Christian leaders on Oct. 13.
The response was released
by the Vatican press office today, and signed
Nov. 19 on the Pontiff's behalf
by Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, the Pope's
secretary of state.
The Pope has asked me
to convey his gratitude to Your Royal Highness
and to all who signed the
letter. He also wishes
to express his deep
appreciation for this gesture, for the positive
spirit which inspired the text
and for the call for a common commitment
to promoting peace in the
world.
Without ignoring or
downplaying our differences as Christians and
Muslims, we can and therefore should look to
what
unites us, namely, belief in the
one God, the provident Creator and
universal Judge who at the
end of time will deal with each person
according to his or her
actions. We are all
called to commit ourselves
totally to him and to obey his sacred will.
Mindful of the content of
his Encyclical Letter "Deus Caritas
Est" (God is Love), His
Holiness was particularly impressed by the
attention given in the letter to
the twofold commandment to love God and
one's neighbour.
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November 30 - Pope's new encyclical calls for a rediscovery of hope
Article: Roman Catholic Church And The Last Days
"It is
not the elemental spirits of the
universe-relates the Holy
Father-which ultimately govern the world and
mankind, but a personal God
governs the stars, that is, the universe;
it is not the laws of matter and
of evolution that have the final say,
but reason, will, love-a
Person."
This changes man's world
because "the inexorable power of material
elements no longer has the
last word; we are not slaves of the universe
and of its laws, we are
free." Christians have hope because Jesus
"tells us who man truly is
and what a man must do in order to be truly
human," explains
the Pope.
The Holy Father begins his
look at the modern Christian understanding
of hope by asking, is Christian hope
individualistic? In other words,
does a person's salvation depend only
on their personal life, or does
it hinge upon our service of others too.
Lamenting the
"personalization" of salvation,
the Pope asks, "How did we arrive at this
interpretation of the
"salvation of the soul" as a flight from
responsibility for the whole,
and how did we come to conceive the
Christian project as a selfish
search for salvation which rejects the
idea of serving others?
"
Moreover, "this programmatic vision has
determined the trajectory of
modern times and it also shapes the
present-day crisis of faith
which is essentially a crisis of Christian
hope," says the
Pope.
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November 30 - Pope pens new hymn to Mary in "Saved by Hope"
Article: Roman Catholic Church And The Last Days
Vatican City, Nov 30,
2007 / 10:43 am (CNA)
.-
At the
conclusion of his encyclical released today,
Pope Benedict
honored
Mary as our model of hope and asked for
her intercession in showing
us the way to the Father.
Using a title for Mary used
for over a thousand years, the Holy
Father explained how the "Star of the Sea" is
our
model for hope on our earthly
journey. He described the dark, turbulent
waters that we face in life and
the need to have a star as a guide to
follow the route.
"Certainly, Jesus
Christ is the true light, the sun that has risen
above all the shadows of
history. But to reach
him we also need lights close
by - people who shine with his light and
so guide us along our
way. Who more than Mary could be a star of
hope
for us?"
"Your life was thoroughly
imbued with the
sacred scriptures of Israel
which spoke of hope, of the promise made to
Abraham and his
descendants (cf. Lk 1:55)."
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December 1 - Leaders bring meditation to Christianity
Article: New Age
When her husband,
Charles, became a paraplegic
following a severe spinal cord injury, the Prescotts
turned to transcendental
meditation for stress relief. "Then, all of the sudden, I
found it offered in a religious context," Pat
Prescott said. "And it's made a
world of difference in how we've felt about a lot of
things.
"We haven't won the lottery, or had illnesses
cured, but
we seem to have a lot more balance in the way we
see life. And we've been
through our ups and downs."
The upcoming three-day Christian Meditation
conference, to be held at the Hyatt
Sarasota starting Friday, will
offer a chance to learn
about and experience "contemplative
prayer," a term used to describe meditation
in a Christian context. Starting with a public talk
Friday evening, and
ending with a communal brunch Sunday, attendees from
across the nation will learn from two of the nation's
leaders in contemplative
prayer, also called "centering prayer."
The Rev.
Laurence Freeman,
a
Roman Catholic priest who leads the World
Community for Christian Meditation,
will join Abbot Thomas Keating, co-founder of
Contemplative Outreach Ltd. The
two are leaders for more than 30 years in a movement
that involves not only
restoring the ancient and mystical practice of
contemplation into Christianity,
but also encouraging interfaith dialogue such as
ongoing gatherings with the
Buddhist leader, the Dalai Lama.
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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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