Magazzino

Christianity in China

Sun, 05 Sep 2010 14:33:13 +0000

Christopher Landau explores the explosive growth of christianity in China, with millions flocking to the official Protestant and Catholic churches. The country has the world’s largest bible printing press while some factories are run on Christian principles.

BBC on Christianity in China

Sun, 05 Sep 2010 14:22:03 +0000

Christopher Landau on the BBC continues his journey of discovery among China’s state-sanctioned Christian churches. He meets a 94-year-old Catholic bishop who regrets that because of China’s one-child policy, few parents want their sons to be priests. But…

Expedited jury trials measure goes to the governor

Thu, 02 Sep 2010 04:58:18 +0000

A bill to authorize expedited jury trials, a streamlined method for handling certain civil cases in a more cost-effective manner for the litigants and the courts, sailed through the legislature on a unanimous vote last month, enjoying the same level of support it has drawn from plaintiff and defense lawyers, as well as other parties typically involved in civil cases.

If the governor signs the bill, the Judicial Council will be authorized to create court rules that will be implemented Jan. 1.

Noreen Evans

The Expedited Jury Trials Act (AB 2284) would permit cases to be heard on a date certain, before a judge and a jury of eight. Each side will be limited to three peremptory challenges and must put on their case in three hours, including opening and closing arguments, with a goal of concluding the case in one day. Participation is voluntary, verdicts — reached by six jurors — are binding, and appeals and post-trial motions are strictly limited. The proposal was developed over 18 months by a wide-ranging Judicial Council group that included advocates who otherwise agree on little and is modeled on similar quick trials that have been offered in New York and South Carolina for at least five years.

Dan Pone, senior attorney in the Judicial Council’s Office of Governmental Affairs who shepherded the measure through the legislature, said it offers a win-win for all the parties. Plaintiffs get their day in court and cases are heard quickly and less expensively. Defendants and their insurance companies can get guaranteed maximum exposure and more finality.

The rules will apply to all counties, but each court will decide how to offer speedy trials. If the demand is high in larger counties, courts may create separate divisions or appoint a particular judge to handle the expedited trials.

Assemblywoman Noreen Evans, D-Santa Rosa, who authored the bill, said it “saves the judiciary significant amounts of money and allows people to get their cases to trial and have their day in court. . . . There’s no reason for people to oppose it.” The measure came to fruition after two years of work by a coalition of defense counsel, consumer attorneys, and representatives of the judiciary and business who were able to hammer out a compromise before the bill came up for debate.

Evans, a former insurance defense counsel, worked with the same coalition to win passage last year of the Electronic Discovery Act, and said she is working on a number of issues “to modernize legal practice and save the judiciary money.”

Vicente L. Rafael

afiore — Wed, 25 Aug 2010 03:12:51 +0000

Professor of History

Welcome to my website. I am a Professor of History whose research and teaching include the following fields: Southeast Asia (especially the Philippines), Comparative Colonialism (especially Spain and the United States), and Comparative Nationalism. I also maintain an active interest in the related fields of cultural anthropology, literary studies and European continental philosophy. Through my location in the department of history, I have sought to touch on topics that include language and power, translation and religious conversion, technology and humanity, the politics and poetics of representation.

This website offers links to my CV and publicatons, as well as links to resources for doing research on the Philippines and to other useful sites.

The poet and author Reinhold Schneider

Tue, 10 Aug 2010 19:46:03 +0000

The poet and author Reinhold Schneider spent the winter of 1957-58 in Vienna. It was his last winter, though he was just 55. He kept a diary for the four or five months that he spent in Vienna. He was already seriously ill and plagued by deep melancholy; he died at Easter, 1958. Again and again he wrote about the terrors, the incomprehensible cruelties of nature, of the “process of eating and being eaten” (Winter in Wien, Freiburg, 1958, p. 184), and also about the senseless and terrible human world full of suffering and war and unfathomable evil.

Had this sick and depressed poet, who had given encouragement to so many people in the Nazi era, lost his faith? Did he revert to the tragic world view that had characterized his thought before his conversion to the Catholic faith? His reflections on and his consternation (verging on despair) at the horrors of this world put into question his faith in a good creator, in His meaningful plan, in His benevolent providence. Let me quote three passages from his diaries.

Found in :

http://stephanscom.at/edw/katechesen/articles/2006/05/15/a10783

Excomunicate me, please - Part II

Sun, 08 Aug 2010 21:47:12 +0000

Part II

So, each person must decide: Stay and fight (cutting off the money
but with little hope for change) or leave. Both options are spiritually
and emotionally exhausting.

That’s why, silly as it sounds,
formal excommunication by the hierarchy would be a welcome relief. If
they would just make the decision for me, give me a piece of paper that
says, “you’re out,” it would free my conscience of all of this. Then
someday, when I see the faces of my grandparents, I can assure them that
I fought the good fight, finished the race and kept the faith that they
gave me at that baptismal font long ago.

I just wish they were here to tell me what that means right now.

Come Holy Spirit.

Sheila
O’Brien is a wife, mother, daughter, sister, a product of 22 years of
Catholic education and active in her parish. She is a justice of the
Illinois Appellate Court, Chicago.

Excommunicate me, please

Sun, 08 Aug 2010 21:45:23 +0000

August 04, 2010|By Sheila O’Brien

Would someone in Rome formally excommunicate me, please? I want to be excommunicated by the Roman Catholic Church because walking away will break my heart.

My grandparents left Ireland with nothing but their vibrant faith. They and my parents brought my siblings and me to a baptismal font and promised to guide us to Christ. And, they did that by word and deed. They taught us to love the Gospel and challenged us to live that Gospel at all costs. I love the Mass, Catholic social teaching, the scores of nuns who built the church around the world, the dedicated priests and people who love God with all their hearts and bring that love to the world. It is my life, the center of every experience, the filter for reality.

But, the headlines continue — more pedophilia, more stonewalling by the bishops, more “norms” from Rome protecting perpetrators. Now, it is a “crime” of the church to attempt to ordain people like Mother Teresa or St. Teresa of Avila — women. And, the hierarchy, who have arguably hidden crimes and criminals, who will not open the books so we can see where our money has gone and who always claim the moral high ground, have grouped ordaining women with pedophilia.

Our heads swirl. How can we stay in a church whose leaders protect pedophiles? Yet, how can we leave and relinquish our church to those very leaders?

We have a financial remedy — write “one time bequest” on your parish contribution check and all the money will stay in your parish; none will go downtown. Do it. That will stop the spigot of money to the hierarchy and may get their attention. But, it doesn’t salve our consciences about how to live the Gospel in an institution off the rails.

We watch the bishops ignore recommendations from fellow Catholics who served on an abuse panel. We have waited for the civil authorities to empanel grand juries and bring indictments, but that has not happened. And, our long wait for a bishop or priest of courage, of conscience, to speak up and say “enough” has proven fruitless. The priests are scared of retribution from the bishops; they tell us so.

….

Priesthood - Reserved to Men

Sun, 08 Aug 2010 21:28:03 +0000

In his Apostolic Letter Ordinatio sacerdotalis (1994), the Holy Father Pope John Paul II, declared that “the Church has no authority whatsoever to confer priestly ordination on women and that this judgment is to be definitively held by all the Church’s faithful.” This definitive statement leaves no “wiggle room” for those who would like to continue debating the question. As the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith made clear in 1995, the statement that the Church has no authority to ordain women as priests, is not merely a matter of Church discipline (which can be changed), but belongs to the deposit of faith (which cannot). “This teaching requires definitive assent, since, founded on the written Word of God, and from the beginning constantly preserved and applied in the Tradition of the Church, it has been set forth infallibly by the ordinary and universal Magisterium (cf. Second Vatican Council, Dogmatic Constitution on the Church Lumen Gentium 25, 2). Thus, in the present circumstances, the Roman Pontiff, exercising his proper office of confirming the brethren (cf. Lk 22:32), has handed on this same teaching by a formal declaration, explicitly stating what is to be held always, everywhere, and by all, as belonging to the deposit of the faith” (Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Concerning the Teaching Contained in Ordinatio Sacerdotalis).

This Apostolic Letter alludes to the reasons given in the Declaration Inter Insignores, by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith in 1976. They include, in addition to the testimony of Scripture and Tradition, the example of Christ, who though counter-cultural in many respects, continued Israel’s tradition of a male priesthood in reserving the Office of Apostle to men. That the Apostles did not regard this as a divine oversight is evident from the fact that they themselves ordained only men. And so the Church has continued this Sacred Tradition down to the present.

The question why women can’t be ordained priests is often confused with the issue of equality. The Holy Father has made it clear that men and women (as far as their sex is concerned) are equal before God (e.g., Mulieris Dignitatem 6). But equality isn’t identity. Men and women have different though complementary functions. Priesthood is a male function, for the reason that a priest is an icon of Christ, and Christ is male. The maleness of Christ is an important sign of His relationship to the Church, His Bride. As in nearly all cultures a man takes the initiative in winning a wife, so Christ took the initiative in winning souls and establishing His Church. For this reason, marriage is a “mystery” or sacrament of the Church (Eph 5:32).

St. Paul develops this theme in his parallel between a local church and the family. A “bishop” (or “overseer,” which applied to both bishops and priests in NT times) is expected to keep his own family in order, “for if a man does not know how to manage his own household, how can he care for God’s church?” (1 Tim 3:5) Male headship in the family is an axiom of both Scripture and Tradition, and if the Church is the Household of God, and Christ is Head of the Church, then His headship in the Church can be represented only by men.

However, lest it seem that God has honored men above women, we should recall that of all created beings, including the hierarchy of Angels, God raised a Woman to the highest place, the Blessed Virgin Mary. Though she was not an Apostle, she was made Queen of the Apostles, Queen of Angels, Queen of the universe, and the Mother of her own Creator.

Answered by David Gregson, PhD

Nasce il registro delle persone senza fissa dimora

Wed, 21 Jul 2010 16:52:44 +0000

19.07.2010
Ministero dell´Interno
Un decreto previsto dalla legge sulla sicurezza pubblica ne affida la tenuta e conservazione al Dipartimento per gli affari interni e territoriali - Direzione centrale per i servizi demografici

Pubblicato nella Gazzetta ufficiale il decreto del ministero dell’Interno 6 luglio 2010 che individua le modalità di funzionamento del registro delle persone senza fissa dimora, in attuazione della legge sulla sicurezza pubblica del 15 luglio 2009, n. 94.

Titolare del registro nazionale è il Dipartimento per gli affari interni e territoriali - Direzione centrale per i servizi demografici, che vi accede esclusivamente, mediante apposita funzione di ricerca, per le finalità di tenuta e di conservazione del registro.
I comuni, iscritta una persona nell’anagrafe della popolazione residente, evidenziano la posizione anagrafica di senza fissa dimora nell’Indice nazionale delle anagrafi (Ina).

Le modalità tecniche di costituzione e funzionamento del registro, formato dai campi valorizzati relativi alle posizioni anagrafiche di senza fissa dimora, sono fissate nell’allegato tecnico del provvedimento.

Vatican labels the ordination of women a ‘grave crime’ to be dealt with in the same way as sex abuse

Fri, 16 Jul 2010 20:16:10 +0000

By Steve Doughty
Last updated at 8:08 AM on 16th July 2010

* Comments (207)
* Added to My Stories

Defensive: Monsignor Charles Scicluna, the Vatican’s sex crimes prosecutor, talks to the media at the Vatican today

Making a woman a priest is as sinful as abusing a child, the Roman Catholic Church declared yesterday.

New religious rules published by the Vatican set both sins at the same level of gravity and recommended the same punishment for guilty priests.

Church officials in Rome insisted that the new version of Canon Law showed it was ‘very, very serious in its commitment to promote safe environments’.

But it had the appearance of an own goal by Pope Benedict XVI in his attempt to cool the scandal over Catholic cover-ups of child abuse by paedophile priests.

Victims’ groups protested that criminal offences against children should be given far greater weight than doctrinal arguments over whether women can be ordained.

The Vatican move also appeared badly-timed as it followed the debate in the Church of England over appointing women bishops that won worldwide publicity at the weekend.

The new rules mean that priests can be defrocked or excommunicated for paedophile offences, sexual abuse of mentally handicapped adults or attempting to ordain women.

Acquiring, possessing or distributing child pornography will be regarded as an offence on the same level as physical abuse of children.

Erring priests will be punished by the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith, the Vatican department once known as the Inquisition.

In the past a complex system of church tribunals would take months or even years to deal with a paedophile priest. However, from today priests will be dealt with summarily by church leaders.

Doctrinal official Monsignor Charles Scicluna said: ‘This gives a signal that we are very, very serious in our commitment to promote safe environments and to offer an adequate response to abuse.’

But including the ordination of women in the same category of religious crime suggested that the Vatican may still have underestimated the impact of recent abuse scandals.
Under fire: Pope Benedict (file photo)

Under fire: Pope Benedict (file photo)

Pope Benedict was drawn personally into the sex abuse row in March when he was accused of intervening, while a Vatican official in the 1990s, to protect an American paedophile priest from being unfrocked.

The ordination of women priests is seen as a major offence by few outside the Roman Catholic hierarchy and many Catholic worshippers believe their church’s ban is wrong.

But the Vatican, together with the Catholic wing of the Church of England, believes that since Christ chose no women disciples, it is wrong for women to assume leadership in the Church.

Campaigners for abuse victims were heavily critical of the new rules.

Andrew Madden, a former Dublin altar boy who took the Church to court in Ireland during the 1990s, said: ‘The first thing the Church should be doing is reporting crimes to civil authorities.

‘That’s far more important than deciding whether a criminal priest should be defrocked or not. The Church’s internal rules are no more important than the rules of your local golf club.’

Barbara Dorris, of the Survivors’ Network for Those Abused by Priests, said the new rules ‘can be summed up in three words: missing the b

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/worldnews/article-1295012/Vatican-labels-ordination-women-grave-crime-par-sex-abuse.html?ITO=1490##ixzz0tsWBVdIF