Diasporas: Mapping migration

Nov 17th 2011, 14:54 by The Economist online

Where are the world's biggest Chinese and Indian immigrant communities?

MORE Chinese people live outside mainland China than French people live in France, with some to be found in almost every country. Some 22m ethnic Indians are scattered across every continent. Diasporas have been a part of the world for millennia. But today their size (if migrants were a nation, they would be the world's fifth-largest) and the ease of staying in touch with those at home are making them matter much more. No other social networks offer the same global reach—and shrewd firms are taking notice. Our map highlights the world's top 20 destinations for Chinese and Indian migrants.

The joy of walking : A path through time immemorial

http://www.economist.com/node/21541720

A trip along the Dales Way shows how Britain balances walkers’ rights with property rights
Dec 17th 2011 | ILKLEY |From the print edition


PACKHORSES first crossed the Old Bridge in Ilkley in 1675, probably bringing wool to market from the sheep farms that still dot the Yorkshire Dales. The modern traveller will approach the bridge across the river Wharfe with a different purpose. A sign at its foot heralds the start of the Dales Way, a 76-mile (122-kilometre) trek through some of the prettiest parts of England.

The intrepid hiker who makes the full trip will walk on every kind of surface: main roads, narrow rocky paths that are slippery when wet (as this correspondent can painfully attest), alleys overgrown with weeds, and fields where mud has merged with sheep and cow dung to form a brown ooze the colour of oxtail soup. He will pass through tiny villages with quintessential Yorkshire names like Hubberholme and Yockenthwaite and cross (via an overhead walkway) the six lanes of the M6 motorway that threads from Birmingham to Carlisle. And he will observe the English at play in all kinds of weather—teenage boys enjoying a refreshing swim, trout fishermen standing thigh-high in the current, elderly couples accompanied by their dogs and even one man taking his falcon for a walk.

The joys of walking have long inspired poets and writers. Some have spoken of the sense of freedom that comes from leaving the city behind; the delicious choices offered by forked paths that lead through deep woods or over hilltops. In the “Song of the Open Road”, Walt Whitman wrote:


Afoot and lighthearted I take to the open road,
Healthy, free, the world before me,
The long brown path before me leading wherever I choose.



Walking seems to set the mind free for contemplation. The philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche said that “All truly great thoughts are conceived by walking.” The Welsh writer Lloyd Jones, who was inspired to produce his first novel by a 1,000-mile trek round his homeland, said that “The moving landscape provides an absorbing diversion which frees the mind and gives us a fresh viewpoint, and we're most at ease with the world when we walk because everything is happening at a manageable pace.”

Some politicians like the ability to ponder the great issues of state as they plod. William Gladstone, a Victorian prime minister and moralist, was an enthusiastic daily walker, opening a route up Mount Snowdon at the age of 83. While mired in the euro zone's financial woes this year, Angela Merkel, the German chancellor, chose to spend her summer holiday walking in the south Tyrol (although the trip didn't inspire any immediate solutions to the problem).


In Europe, now that national borders have withered away, the open road is longer. Paths criss-cross the continent from the Black Sea to the Atlantic. Lis Nielsen of the European Ramblers' Association recounts how she met a young Slovenian while walking in her native Denmark. He had grown up in a village marked by a sign for the E6 hiking trail that runs from Finland to the Aegean. He dreamed of following the route to Denmark and saved up all his annual holiday entitlement so he could do so.

America has a huge number of hiking routes, nearly all on public land. The Appalachian Trail, which follows the eponymous mountains from Georgia to Maine, is almost 2,200 miles long (some hikers claim that there is little to see but trees). Yosemite national park in California includes over 800 miles of trails.

Some 56m Americans went hiking in 2010, according to a survey by the Outdoor Industry Foundation. The number of people who went backpacking overnight rose by 18% between 2006 and 2010. It is a cheap activity, well-suited to an era of economic malaise. A survey of hikers in America's Washington state found that, on average, they each spent just $409 a year on their hobby.

Broadly speaking, the countries that offer the most liberal rights to walkers are those with the most free space. In Norway and Sweden, where the national character is steeped in stoicism and fresh air, there is a general assumption in favour of access. But the pattern does not always hold. In the thinly populated American West, hikers sometimes find it necessary to cross private land in order to link between national and state parks. They can do so only if landowners are friendly: the idea of a “right to roam”—enacted in Britain in 2000—would strike most Americans as very strange.

Recreational walking is by far the most popular leisure activity in Britain: 16% of Britons do it each week, according to the government, compared with 11% who go to the gym. Perhaps this derives from the old connection between rural pursuits and breeding: Victorian businessmen who made good hastened to buy a country estate. Perhaps the claustrophobia caused by living in the most densely populated large country in Europe drives Britons to seek out open spaces at the weekends. Or perhaps it is down to the British love of dogs, who trot behind many an occasional walker.

But while Britons have itchy feet, they are also very attached to the notion that their homes are their castles. So there is a struggle—albeit a generally well-mannered one—between walkers' rights and property rights.

Walking since time immemorial

The 4,000 or so people who annually complete the Dales Way are tackling just one of the 720 long-distance trails that traverse the British Isles. The longest, the South West Coast path, is 630 miles long, taking in the coast of Devon and Cornwall; it is also one of the easiest to navigate as long as travellers follow a simple rule (start in Minehead and keep the sea on your right). New long-distance paths are added every year, largely by linking existing paths together; there were just 150 national trails back in 1980. The total British network covers close to 150,000 miles; a lot for a small group of islands.

These treks are part of a grand British tradition; the right to walk over private land. This right is not unlimited. The route has to have been established by custom. Some of the paths were built by the Romans; others date back to “time immemorial”, a date established by legal convention to be the reign of Richard the Lionheart (1189-1199).

Paths were originally designed for practical, rather than leisure, use. In Scotland broad paths were built after the Jacobite rebellions of the 18th century, as a way of allowing English soldiers to move quickly round the rugged landscape. Medieval peasants needed to cross feudal estates to get to market. Some paths disappeared when common land was enclosed in the 18th century but walkers fought back: in 1826, the Manchester Association for the Preservation of Ancient Footpaths was formed with the aim of taking a local landowner to court.

A legal principle dubbed “once a highway, always a highway” means that a right of way, once established, is hard to abolish. That is why English hikers can find themselves wandering through a cornfield, or facing the suspicious gaze of a sheep; activities that in America might attract the attention of an angry landowner with a shotgun. The Dales Way takes the hiker past the kitchen windows of several farms and down private driveways; on this correspondent's trek, an enterprising schoolboy had set up a stall, complete with honesty box, to sell drinks to parched walkers.

A rough code binds both parties. Landowners are not supposed to block footpaths, or leave hikers at the mercy of an angry bull; walkers are supposed to shut gates, leave no litter and keep their dogs under control. The designated highway authority (usually the local council) is responsible for maintaining the route and, as a result, owns the physical ground of the path, “to the depth of two spades” according to legal custom.

These hiking rights were established through classic English compromise. In 1932, 400-500 ramblers walked across a stretch of grouse moor in Derbyshire in the face of robust opposition. Gamekeepers sought to repel the invasion, lest the hikers scare away the birds that their employers sought to shoot. Some of the trespassers were sent to jail. In those days, hiking was a cheap way for factory workers to escape from their satanic mills at weekends, so the pastime was imbued with proletarian virtue. Ministers in the post-war Labour government of 1945-51 held an annual ramble in the Pennines. That government duly passed the National Parks and Access to Countryside Act, enacting walkers' rights and creating much-loved parks in, for instance, the Lake District and Snowdonia. Another Labour government passed the Countryside and Rights of Way Act in 2000 that gave walkers Nordic-style rights to roam across open land like moors and mountains.
Hiking was a cheap way for factory hands to escape from satanic mills at weekends

Such acts have a difficult balance to strike. Even those who guard the right to roam most jealously would object if passers-by wandered through their back gardens. Some celebrities, such as Madonna, have argued that walkers represent a threat to their personal security and demanded restrictions on access rights. One landowner, Nicholas van Hoogstraten, blocked a path through his land with barbed wire and even a padlocked gate. The Ramblers' Association took him to court and won.

But such cases are rare. The most alarming hazard this correspondent came across was a sign implying the presence of a bull in the next field; fortunately, it turned out to be a pictorial, rather than actual, deterrent.

To the annoyance of landowners, ramblers tend to resist permanent alterations to ancient paths, even when a diversion would make the walk no less pleasant; but landowners are often able to get courts to agree to temporary diversions past their land (as the model Claudia Schiffer did when she married in the Suffolk village of Shimpling in 2002). The Ramblers' Association, which fights doggedly for walkers' rights, says it is notified of such diversions, the vast majority of which are unopposed, 70-80 times a week.

In America, the hiker's biggest problem is generally isolation. It can be a week between towns on the Appalachian Trail, so travellers need a week's worth of food as well as extra water. On long stretches of the trail, the accommodation is a wooden hut with one side exposed to the elements.

The British hiker, by contrast, is rarely far from a bed-and-breakfast where sweaty clothes can be shed, showers taken, and a full English breakfast provided, complete with such nutritionally dubious items as fatty bacon and fried bread. At the communal dining table, doughty old women rub shoulders with rugby-playing students. While the landlady slaves away in the kitchen, the landlord may well give the guests the benefits of his views on the finer points of politics and economics. But even if his company is uncongenial, the boarding house will soon be left far behind. On the Dales Way, only the sheep can hear you scream.

From the print edition: Christmas Specials

http://www.economist.com/node/21541720/print

The Paradox of Pope Francis | Hans Kung: National Catholic Reporter

The Paradox of Pope Francis | Hans Kung: National Catholic Reporter



By Hans Kung | May 21, 2013 | National Catholic Reporter


Who could have imagined what has happened in the last weeks?

When I decided, months ago, to resign all of my official duties on the occasion of my 85th birthday, I assumed I would never see fulfilled my dream that -- after all the setbacks following the Second Vatican Council -- the Catholic church would once again experience the kind of rejuvenation that it did under Pope John XXIII.

Then my theological companion over so many decades, Joseph Ratzinger -- both of us are now 85 -- suddenly announced his resignation from the papal office effective at the end of February. And on March 19, St. Joseph’s feast day and my birthday, a new pope with the surprising and programmatic name Francis assumed this office.

Has Jorge Mario Bergoglio considered why no pope has dared to choose the name of Francis until now? At any rate, the Argentine was aware that with the name of Francis he was connecting himself with Francis of Assisi, the world-famous 13th-century downshifter who had been the fun-loving, worldly son of a rich textile merchant in Assisi, until at the age of 24, he gave up his family, wealth and career, even giving his splendid clothes back to his father.

It is astonishing how, from the first minute of his election, Pope Francis chose a new style: unlike his predecessor, no miter with gold and jewels, no ermine-trimmed cape, no made-to-measure red shoes and headwear, no magnificent throne.

Astonishing, too, that the new pope deliberately abstains from solemn gestures and high-flown rhetoric and speaks in the language of the people.

And finally it is astonishing how the new pope emphasizes his humanity: He asked for the prayers of the people before he gave them his blessing; settled his own hotel bill like anybody else; showed his friendliness to the cardinals in the coach, in their shared residence, at the official goodbye; washed the feet of young prisoners, including those of a young Muslim woman. A pope who demonstrates that he is a man with his feet on the ground.

All this would have pleased Francis of Assisi and is the opposite of what Pope Innocent III (1198-1216) represented in his time. In 1209, Francis and 11 “lesser brothers” (fratres minores or friars minor) traveled to Rome to lay before Innocent their short rule, consisting entirely of quotations from the Bible, and to ask for papal approval for their way of life, living in poverty and preaching as lay preachers “according to the form of the Holy Gospel.”

Innocent III, the duke of Segni, who was only 37 when he was elected pope, was a born ruler; he was a theologian educated in Paris, a shrewd lawyer, a clever speaker, a capable administrator and a sophisticated diplomat. No pope before or after him had ever had as much power as he had. Innocent completed the revolution from above initiated by Gregory VII in the 11th century (“the Gregorian Reform”). Instead of the title of “Successor of St. Peter,” Innocent preferred the title of “Vicar of Christ,” as used by every bishop or priest until the 12th century. Unlike in the first millennium and never acknowledged in the apostolic churches of the East, the pope since then has acted as the absolute ruler, lawgiver and judge of Christianity -- until today.

The triumphal pontificate of Innocent proved itself to be not only the high point but also the turning point. Already in his time, there were signs of decay that, up until in our own time, have remained features of the Roman Curia system: nepotism, favoritism, acquisitiveness, corruption and dubious financial dealings. Already in the 1170s and 1180s, however, powerful nonconformist penitent and mendicant orders (Cathars, Waldensians) were developing. But popes and bishops acted against these dangerous currents by banning lay preaching, condemning “heretics” by the Inquisition, and even carrying out the Albigensian Crusade.

Yet it was Innocent himself who tried to integrate into the church evangelical-apostolic mendicant orders, even during all the eradication policies against obstinate “heretics” like the Cathars. Even Innocent knew that an urgent reform of the church was needed, and it was for this reform that he called the glorious Fourth Lateran Council. And so, after long admonition, he gave Francis of Assisi permission to preach. Concerning the ideal of absolute poverty as required by the Franciscan rule, the pope would first seek to know the will of God in prayer. On the basis of a dream in which a small, insignificant member of an order saved the papal Basilica of St. John Lateran from collapsing -- so it was told -- the pope finally allowed the Rule of Francis of Assisi. He let this be known in the Consistory of Cardinals but never had it committed to paper.

A different path

In fact, Francis of Assisi represented the alternative to the Roman system. What would have happened if Innocent and his like had taken the Gospel seriously? Even if they had understood it spiritually rather than literally, his evangelical demands meant and still mean an immense challenge to the centralized, legalized, politicized and clericalized system of power that had taken over the cause of Christ in Rome since the 11th century.

Innocent III was probably the only pope who, because of his unusual characteristics, could have directed the church along a completely different path, and this would have saved the papacies of the 14th and 15th centuries schism and exile, and the church in the 16th century the Protestant Reformation. Obviously, this would already have meant a paradigm shift for the Catholic church in the 13th century, a shift that instead of splitting the church would have renewed it, and at the same time reconciled the churches of East and West.

Thus, the early Christian basic concerns of Francis of Assisi remain even today questions for the Catholic church and now for a pope who, indicating his intentions, has called himself Francis. It is above all about the three basic concerns of the Franciscan ideal that have to be taken seriously today: It is about poverty, humility and simplicity. This probably explains why no previous pope has dared to take the name of Francis: The expectations seem to be too high.

That begs a second question: What does it mean for a pope today if he bravely takes the name of Francis? Of course the character of Francis of Assisi must not be idealized; he could be one-sided, eccentric, and he had his weaknesses, too. He is not the absolute standard. But his early Christian concerns must be taken seriously even if they need not be literally implemented but rather translated into modern times by pope and church.
Poverty: The church in the spirit of Innocent III meant a church of wealth, pomp and circumstance, acquisitiveness and financial scandal. In contrast, a church in the spirit of Francis means a church of transparent financial policies and modest frugality. A church that concerns itself above all with the poor, the weak and the marginalized. A church that does not pile up wealth and capital but instead actively fights poverty and offers its staff exemplary conditions of employment.
Humility: The church in the spirit of Innocent means a church of power and domination, bureaucracy and discrimination, repression and Inquisition. In contrast, a church in the spirit of Francis means a church of humanity, dialogue, brotherhood and sisterhood, hospitality for nonconformists; it means the unpretentious service of its leaders and social solidarity, a community that does not exclude new religious forces and ideas from the church but rather allows them to flourish.
Simplicity: The church in the spirit of Innocent means a church of dogmatic immovability, moralistic censure and legal hedging, a church of canon law regulating everything, a church of all-knowing scholastics and of fear. In contrast, a church in the spirit of Francis of Assisi means a church of good news and of joy, a theology based purely on the Gospel, a church that listens to people instead of indoctrinating from above, a church that does not only teach but one that constantly learns.
So, in the light of the concerns and approaches of Francis of Assisi, basic options and policies can be formulated today for a Catholic church whose façade still glitters on great Roman occasions but whose inner structure is rotten and fragile in the daily life of parishes in many lands, which is why many people have left it in spirit and often in fact.

While no reasonable person will expect that one man can effect all reforms overnight, a paradigm shift would be possible in five years: This was shown by the Lorraine Pope Leo IX (1049-54) who prepared Gregory VII’s reforms, and in the 20th century by the Italian John XXIII (1958-63) who called the Second Vatican Council. But, today above all, the direction should be made clear again: not a restoration to pre-council times as there was under the Polish and German popes, but instead considered, planned and well-communicated steps to reform along the lines of the Second Vatican Council.

A third question presents itself today as much as then: Will a reform of the church not meet with serious opposition? Doubtless, he will thus awaken powerful opposition, above all in the powerhouse of the Roman Curia, opposition that is difficult to withstand. Those in power in the Vatican are not likely to abandon the power that has been accumulated since the Middle Ages.

Curial pressures

Francis of Assisi also had to experience the force of such curial pressures. He who wanted to free himself of everything by living in poverty clung more and more closely to “Holy Mother Church.” Not in confrontation with the hierarchy but rather in obedience to pope and Curia, he wanted to live in imitation of Jesus: in a life of poverty, in lay preaching. He and his followers even had themselves tonsured in order to enter the clerical state. In fact, this made preaching easier but on the other it encouraged the clericalization of the young community, which included more and more priests. So it is not surprising that the Franciscan community became increasingly integrated into the Roman system. Francis’ last years were overshadowed by the tensions between the original ideals of Jesus’ followers and the adaptation of his community to the existing type of monastic life.

To do Francis justice: On Oct. 3, 1226, aged only 44, he died as poor as he had lived. Just 10 years previously, one year after the Fourth Lateran Council, Innocent III died unexpectedly at the age of 56. On July 16, 1216, his body was found in the Cathedral of Perugia: This pope who had known how to increase the power, property and wealth of the Holy See like no other before him was found deserted by all, naked, robbed by his own servants. A trumpet call signaling the transition from papal world domination to papal powerlessness: At the beginning of the 13th century there is Innocent III reigning in glory; at the end of the century, there is the megalomaniac Boniface VIII (1294-1303) arrested by the French; and then the 70-year exile in Avignon, France, and the Western schism with two and, finally, three popes.

Barely two decades after Francis’ death, the Roman church seemed to almost completely domesticate the rapidly spreading Franciscan movement in Italy so that it quickly became a normal order at the service of papal politics, and even became a tool of the Inquisition. If it was possible for the Roman system to finally domesticate Francis of Assisi and his followers, then obviously it cannot be excluded that a Pope Francis could also be trapped in the Roman system that he is supposed to be reforming. Pope Francis: a paradox? Is it possible that a pope and a Francis, obviously opposites, can ever be reconciled? Only by an evangelically minded, reforming pope.

To conclude, a fourth question: What is to be done if our expectations of reform are quashed from above? In any case, the time is past when pope and bishops could reckon with the obedience of the faithful. The 11th-century Gregorian Reform also introduced a certain mysticism of obedience: Obeying God means obeying the church and that means obeying the pope. Since that time, it has been drummed into Catholics that the obedience of all Christians to the pope is a cardinal virtue; commanding and enforcing obedience -- by whatever means -- has become the Roman style. But the medieval equation, “Obedience to God equals obedience to the church equals obedience to the pope,” patently contradicts the word of the apostle before the Sanhedrin in Jerusalem: “Man must obey God rather than other men.”

We should then in no way fall into resignation; instead, faced with a lack of impulse toward reform from the top down, from the hierarchy, we must take the offensive, pushing for reform from the bottom up. If Pope Francis tackles reforms, he will find he has the wide approval of people far beyond the Catholic church. However, if he just lets things continue as they are, without clearing the logjam of reforms as now in the case of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious, then the call of “Time for outrage! Indignez-vous!” will ring out more and more in the Catholic church, provoking reforms from the bottom up that will be implemented without the approval of the hierarchy and frequently even in spite of the hierarchy’s attempts at circumvention. In the worst case -- as I already wrote before this papal election -- the Catholic church will experience a new ice age instead of a spring and run the risk of dwindling into a barely relevant large sect.

[Theologian Fr. Hans Küng writes from Tübingen, Germany.]

Marco d'Aviano , father of cappuccino

Today is the liturgical feast of Blessed Marco d'Aviano, a catholic capuchin monk from Italie,
also known as the father of cappuccino.

 ( image source : http://www.budapestzin.com/2009/10/statue-of-avianoi-mark.html) 

This statue is in the Fő street made by Győrfi Sándor.

I just gather the following links to give you a bird's eye view on his life: 

Marco d'Aviano (1631-1699) was a Capuchin friar. Born Carlo Domenico Cristofori in Aviano, Republic of Venice. Deeply inspired by his encounter with the Capuchins, he felt that God was calling him to enter the order. In 1648, he entered the novitiate of the Capuchins. A year later, he professed his vows and was given the name "Friar Mark of Aviano". Marco d'Aviano's life changed unexpectedly on 1676 when he gave his blessing to a nun who had been bedridden for some 13 years. Upon receiving Friar Mark's blessing, she was healed.

From 1680 until his death, Marco d'Aviano assisted Leopold I, offering him spiritual guidance and advice for every sort of problem: political, economic, military and religious. Marco d'Aviano was also appointed by Pope Innocent XI as Apostolic Nuncio and Papal Legate. An impassioned preacher, Marco d'Aviano played an important role in maintaining unity among the 'Holy League' armies of Austria, Poland, Venice, and the Papal States under the leadership of the Polish king Jan III Sobieski. In the decisive Battle of Vienna (1683), the 'Holy League' armies succeeded in repulsing the invading Ottoman Turks.

http://www.budapestzin.com/2009/10/statue-of-avianoi-mark.html) 

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Marco d'Aviano and the cappuccino ( from BBC) 

Marco d'Aviano, a wandering preacher for the Capuchin monastic order, is credited with rallying Catholics and Protestants on the eve of the Battle of Vienna in 1683, which was crucial to halting the advance of Turkish soldiers into Europe. 

 He is also remembered by some as the man who, by legend, inspired the fashionable cappuccino coffee now drunk by millions across the globe.  

Coffee was once seen by the Vatican as an "infidel" drink

 The monk, who was born in the city of his name in northern Italy in 1631, was sent by the pope of the day to unite Christians in the face of a huge Ottoman army. 

 Legend has it that, following the victory, the Viennese reportedly found sacks of coffee abandoned by the enemy and, finding it too strong for their taste, diluted it with cream and honey. 

 The drink being of a brown colour like that of the Capuchins' robes, the Viennese named it cappuccino in honour of Marco D'Aviano's order.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/2979993.stm

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Marco d'Aviano and his beatification 

Sunday, 27 April, 2003 :

Pope beatifies 'father of cappuccino'

The Pope plans to make his next beatification in Spain

Pope John Paul II has formally placed a monk who inspired European resistance to Muslim invaders in the 17th Century and five other historic Italian religious figures on the path to sainthood. 

 Their beatification at a ceremony in St Peter's Square marks the final step before actual canonisation through the Roman Catholic Church.

Marco d'Aviano, a wandering preacher for the Capuchin monastic order, is credited with rallying Catholics and Protestants on the eve of the Battle of Vienna in 1683, which was crucial to halting the advance of Turkish soldiers into Europe. 

 He is also remembered by some as the man who, by legend, inspired the fashionable cappuccino coffee now drunk by millions across the globe.  

 The monk, who was born in the city of his name in northern Italy in 1631, was sent by the pope of the day to unite Christians in the face of a huge Ottoman army. 

 Legend has it that, following the victory, the Viennese reportedly found sacks of coffee abandoned by the enemy and, finding it too strong for their taste, diluted it with cream and honey. 

 The drink being of a brown colour like that of the Capuchins' robes, the Viennese named it cappuccino in honour of Marco D'Aviano's order. 

 During Sunday's two-hour ceremony, the ailing 82-year-old pontiff remained in a special chair which allows him to sit, not stand, at the altar while celebrating Mass. 

 The five figures commemorated along with Marco D'Aviano are the latest in a line of 1,310 people this Pope has beatified - a number greater than all those beatified by his predecessors over the past four centuries. 

 Giacomo Alberione (1884-1971) was an Italian priest and best-selling author who believed in preaching via modern technology and founded the Society of St Paul to this end. 

 The other four figures are all nuns who founded religious orders in the 19th Century.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/2979993.stm
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a little history of cappuccino: 

Cappuccino is an Italian coffee-based drink prepared with espresso, hot milk, and milk foam. But do you know where the drink - and the word - comes from? And would you believe this hot new beverage sweeping the nation is actually a hundred years old?

 Cappuccino takes its name from the order of Franciscan Minor friars, named "cappuccini" from their hooded frock ("cappuccio" means hood in Italian).

The drink has always been known by this Italian name. The Espresso coffee machine used to make cappuccino was invented in Italy, with the first patent being filed by Luigi Bezzera in 1901.

The beverage was used in Italy by the early 1900s, and grew in popularity as the large espresso machines in cafés and restaurants were improved during and after World War Two. By the 1950s, the Italian cappuccino had found its form.

Typically regarded as myth, some believe that a 17th century Capuchin monk, Marco d'Aviano, invented Cappuccino after the Battle of Vienna in 1683, and that it was named after him. No one knows if this is true or not.

Cappuccino was a taste largely confined to Europe, Australia, South Africa, South America and the more cosmopolitan regions of North America, until the mid-1990s when cappuccino was made much more widely available to North Americans, as upscale coffee bars sprang up.

In Italy, cappuccino is generally consumed early in the day as part of the breakfast, with a croissant, better known to Italians as cornetto, or a pastry. Generally, Italians do not drink cappuccino with meals other than breakfast. That's obviously not the case in most other countries.
http://www.laperfetto.com/index.php?mact=News,cntnt01,print,0&cntnt01articleid=1&cntnt01showtemplate=false&cntnt01returnid=16
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And...a youtube video tooo....

Cappuccino, the story, the coffee and you (Film 3 of 3) by DouweEgbertsCoffee

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hf3UIjhTszw

Give us this day, Lord, our daily miracle : Paulo Coelho

Today , I read the new Paulo Coelho book : Manuscript Found in Accra.
I will keeep this book very next to Khalil Gibran's 'The prohet' in my bookshelf.
This is a book that has to be read and re-read.
This is a book gracefully spilled with biblical images and expressions.
trying to read it from cover to cover may be a less satisfying endavoure.
Go slow!

Here is a citation from the book:

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Give us this day, Lord, our daily miracle.
Just as there are many paths to the top of a mountain, so there are many paths to achieving our goal. Help us to recognize the only one that is worth following: the one on which Love is to be found.

Help us to awaken the Love sleeping within us before we awaken Love in other people. Only then will we be able to attract affection, enthusiasm, and respect.

Help us to distinguish battles that are ours, battles into which we are propelled against our will, and battles that we cannot avoid because Fate has placed them in our path.

 (miracles) transform the wheat into bread through work, the grape into wine through patience, and death into life through the resurrection of dreams.

Therefore, Lord, give us this day our daily miracle.

Le silence de la place Saint-Pierre : Christian Rioux

http://www.ledevoir.com/societe/ethique-et-religion/373356/le-silence-de-la-place-saint-pierre

Le devoir-  (A3) , vendredi, 15 mars 2013

15 mars 2013 | Christian Rioux | Éthique et religion

Le silence de la place Saint-Pierre

Christian Rioux 

Nous étions quelques centaines de mil­liers sous la bruine à attendre que le pape daigne se montrer à la loggia des bénédictions. Nous étions tous là à surveil­ler le moindre petit signe de vie, à guetter une ombre à la fenêtre. Lorsque le nouveau pape s'est avancé, cela ressemblait encore à un film. Le délire de la foule semblait irréel. Mais c'est lorsque ce jésuite venu d'Argentine, dont le nom ne disait strictement rien à personne — «Bergoglio! Chi è questo Bergoglio ?» —, a de­mandé à la foule d'observer une minute de si­lence que la tension fut à son comble.

Un vrai silence de mort ! Imaginez une vérita­ble marée humaine qui, du parvis de la basi­lique au castel San Angelo 700 mètres plus loin sur les bords du Tibre, s'interrompt tout à coup, ne dit plus un mot, ne fait plus un geste et s'arrête presque de respirer. En plein délire médiatique universel, la cacophonie du monde avait soudain suspendu son vol.

C'est là que je me suis dit que cette drôle d'Église venait de nous jouer un sacré bon tour. Bref, qu'elle savait encore y faire, la sacripante. J'imaginais Benoît XVI souriant dans sa barbe devant son téléviseur à Castel Gandolfo, à 30 ki­lomètres de là. N'est-ce pas lui qui n'avait cessé de souligner tout au long de son pontificat l'im­portance du silence dans un monde qui bruit de mille agitations ? N'est-ce pas lui qui évoquait ce «parloir de l'âme» qu'est le silence et qui avait encouragé les jeunes réunis dans la cathédrale de Sulmona, en Italie, à «écouter Dieu dans le si­lence extérieur et surtout intérieur» ? En 2012, il avait même poussé la provocation jusqu'à faire du «silence» le thème central de la Journée mondiale des communications sociales. Vous avez bien lu : le silence comme thème d'une journée de la communication !

On dit souvent que le temps de l'Eglise n'est pas le temps des médias. Nous en aurons eu une nouvelle preuve éclatante. Tout au long de cet étonnant conclave, l'Église aura dupé tous les médias du début à la fin. A moins que nous ne nous soyons dupés nous-mêmes. On attendait un jeune manager capable de réformer la Çurie, on supputait les chances d'un prince de l'Eglise à poigne capable de reprendre les choses en mains, un maître de la communication sachant twitter. Voilà qu'apparaît un pape François presque aussi âgé que Benoît XVI lors de son élection, un amoureux des pauvres que per­sonne n'attendait, et qui nous impose comme première tâche urgente et essentielle de nous taire pendant au moins une minute. Chut!!!

C'est que, pendant que tous les «vatica- nistes » multipliaient les prévisions et conjectu­raient à hue et à dia, les cardinaux poursui­vaient, eux, leur petit bonhomme de chemin. L'ancien spécialiste du Monde, Henri Tincq, écrivait mercredi sur State.fr que tout se passait «comme si les cardinaux avaient voulu reprendre le fil du conclave de 2005 quand l'élu d'au­jourd'hui avait été, bien malgré lui, le challenger de Joseph Ratzinger». Huit ans plus tard, les car­dinaux ont repris leur travail où ils l'avaient laissé et élu celui qui talonnait Benoît XVI.

Pour l'imaginer, peut-être aurait-il fallu ou­blier un peu les palpitantes luttes de fractions et les sombres complots du Vatican. Peut-être au­rait-il fallu cesser de lire les médias américains qui, au Vatican comme ailleurs, ne jurent que par des réformes administratives et le déficit zéro. Peut-être aurait-il fallu ne pas prêter l'oreille à tous ceux qui s'imaginent que la mo­dernité s'écrit en 140 caractères sur Twitter et surtout pas en latin. Peut-être aurait-il fallu nous contenter de lire — oui lire ! — les délibérations du dernier synode des évêques. La dernière fois qu'ils s'étaient vus, les évêques avaient en effet débattu de la «nouvelle évangélisation». Or, sur quel continent cette « nouvelle évangélisation » est-elle la plus urgente et en même temps la plus menacée sinon en Amérique latine, où les sectes protestantes grugent lentement le capital de l'Église avant de venir la concurrencer en Afrique et en Asie ? En Occident, et peut-être en­core plus au Québec, nous n'avions d'yeux que pour la morale sexuelle de l'Église, un sujet certes important, mais qui finit par devenir obsessif et qui est surtout secondaire dans l'en­semble de ce qui se brasse au Vatican.

Cette semaine, le père LeFloc'h, un Breton de Nantes croisé devant la place Saint-Pierre, me disait que, «dans nos petites chapelles d'Occi­dent», nous n'arrivions pas à voir que, loin d'être ce «cadavre encore grouillant» que l'on a déjà décrit au Québec, l'Eglise était en pleine explosion dans le monde.

L'appel à la justice sociale du cardinal So- dano dans son homélie d'ouverture du conclave aura donc été entendu. Mais, qu'on se le dise, ce pape ne sera pas à la mode. Il est d'ailleurs venu le dire chez nous en 2008: «Si moderne veut dire imiter le monde, l'Église ne le sera pas. L'Église doit être moderne dans ses moyens de transmettre la Bonne Nouvelle [...]. Mais si elle veut être progressiste en captant les idéologies, alors elle risque de devenir une ONG vide et adolescente. »

Et si la modernité résidait dans le silence plus que dans la cacophonie ? Sacré François !

crioux@ledevoir.com

Which Catholic Church?

Which Catholic Church?
By PAUL KENNEDY
Published: February 26, 2013
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/27/opinion/global/which-catholic-church.html?pagewanted=all


Being about the only professor at a liberal, tolerant, cosmopolitan Western university who is known to be a practicing Catholic — baptized at the age of two weeks — I have been asked frequently in recent times about what I think will happen to the church in the light of Pope Benedict’s resignation. Will it split further, between conservatives and liberals? Will there be an African pope? When will there ever be female priests, then bishops? What about declining attendance of the European congregations (as opposed to the surging populations in the southern world)?

I sigh. When I turn to my daily newspapers, I sigh further, at the stereotyping, the false assumptions, the hostility in some quarters, the focus upon protocol rather than substance, the obsession with fiscal laxities at the Vatican rather than the proclaimed mission of Christ. Much of this criticism is boringly predictable; I may be wrong, but I suspect it might be hard to find a month, for example, when New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd does not launch an attack upon the papacy and the Catholic Church. And when the College of Cardinals announces the successor to Benedict, there will be fervid speculation about the new pope’s attitude toward divorce, abortion, the Jews, secularism in Italy, and so on.

That is one view of the Catholic Church, the church of hierarchy, tradition, formalism, its bursts of reform soon restrained by a return to conservatism. It is the church so familiar to the minds of secularists, pagans and anti-Catholics everywhere. It is the church of the 19th-century popes. It is the church of infallibility, incense, candles, and of Latin masses. Pushing it further, it is the church of financial corruption and sexual abuse. It is the church of stereotype, which is not wise.

In the early 1790s, as Europe reeled under the shock of the French Revolution, the great English politician and philosopher Edmund Burke warned against condemning an entire nation, a France of about 30 million souls, for the troubles and wars. Shouldn’t we be wary of condemning a church of roughly 1 billion believers?

On Wednesday last week, I went, as I usually do, to work in the lunchtime soup kitchen of the St. Thomas More Catholic chaplaincy at Yale University in downtown New Haven, Connecticut, founded almost 30 years ago to meet the needs of the poor and hungry. Among our customers, there was the usual group of permanent down-and-outs, meth addicts, drinkers, druggies, and dignified older ladies and gentlemen who had recently lost their jobs and decided to take our food so they could spend their pittances on energy bills. There was a father with four young kids; the local schools had closed because of a blizzard, so they could not get their free school lunches. To talk with our clients is sometimes a revelation. Just a few weeks ago, I talked with a young man (never seen before or since) who wanted to discuss the poems of Shelley and Keats — plus Eliot’s “Four Quartets”!

The helpers at the soup kitchen are all volunteers; they would never expect to be remunerated. Not everyone is Catholic, but most are. They are the parishioners who live around Yale and come in for Sunday Mass and collegiality. They are the Yale students who also work in the downtown evening soup kitchen, or in the men’s overflow night shelter. A number of them are going off to Guatemala in mid-March to help rebuild a village still hurting from the civil wars. They welcome guest speakers and participate in theological discussion groups. This is not a dead or decaying church. It is vibrant and pulsing, rejoicing also in the beauty of the services (especially the sung Masses) and the sheer intellectualism of the homilies. It is our Catholic Church. Nobody is leaving it. What happens in Rome is, well, distant.

A few Sundays ago, the Gospel featured that very familiar tale of “the Good Samaritan” (Luke 10:25-37). A man going to Jericho from Jerusalem was assaulted by robbers, then left to die in the ditch. A priest came by, and rode on. A Levite came by, and did not stop. But the despised Samaritan stopped, took the unknown victim to an inn and paid for all that he needed. Note that the benefactor did not assist a family member, or a college friend, or a favored charity. That’s simply not enough. “Even the pagans do that!” scoffed Jesus in another address.

The litmus test is whether you help the unknown, the desperate-looking person at the soup kitchen, the beggar on the street. At the end of his striking homily upon this passage, the remarkable Catholic chaplain at Yale told us bluntly: “This is the test. Do you love your unknown neighbor as yourself? Do you love your dirty, hairy, smelly, dispossessed neighbor as yourself, and will you reach out to help?” Loving your God, and loving your known and unknown neighbors as yourself, is the core. Everything else, said Father Bob, “is footnotes.” Wow. The married-priests issue is a footnote; the female-priests issue is a footnote; so is divorce, contraception, Latin Masses, changes in the liturgy, even perhaps the death penalty.

What matters is your reaching out to help. That’s the sole question you will be asked when you reach the Pearly Gates.

Does this mean that Catholics do not need a worldwide church structure? Not at all. We need the parish, the parish priest, the parish church, where most of us will be baptized, take Communion and confession, get married and eventually enjoy the last rites. But those parishes reside under the protective umbrella of a diocese and its bishop — and the line from a bishop goes straight to Rome.

The physical parish church offers not only a place for public worship but also a place for study groups, social and fund-raising events, soup kitchens and the like. Nobody, surely, wants to be like the early Christians, wandering through deserts and hillsides, without a physical place of worship, without roots. We need the Church Physical, just as we need the Church Ethical and the Church Social. Even the modest Quakers, with their great commitment to prayer and social justice, need meeting houses, organization and a network.

But no one launching an attack upon the papal elections, Vatican finances, sexism and the rest should think that they are attacking Catholicism per se. From my perspective, our Catholic Church is vibrant, helpful, intellectual, and working in so many ways to fulfill the message to love God and to love, and reach out to, one’s unknown neighbor. Everything else is, well, footnotes.

Paul Kennedy is Dilworth Professor of History and director of International Security Studies at Yale University; and the author of many books, including “The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers.”

TRIBUNE MEDIA SERVICES

"d’abord la justice. Après, peut-être le pardon."

"Soyons limpides. d’abord la justice. Après, peut-être le pardon. Un pardon parfois nécessaire. Pas pour l’agresseur, mais pour la victime. Et pas seulement pour la victime, mais aussi pour l’avenir de nos sociétés."

Gabriel Ringlet




Second Regard, rencontre fascinante avec Gabriel Ringlet.

http://goo.gl/xFnVW


http://www.radio-canada.ca/emissions/second_regard/2012-2013/Entrevue.asp?idDoc=252491&autoPlay=http://www.radio-canada.ca/Medianet/2012/CBFT/2012-10-28_13_30_00_sreg_1903_01_1200.asx#leplayer

Autumn comes hesitatingly in montreal

Photo from cimetière Notre-Dame des neiges

The miracle that was Mother Teresa ( re-post from THE HINDU)

 Navin Chawla


Mother Teresa's path was a unique one. While she never deviated from her faith, she reached out to millions of her special constituency, the deprived and the dying, recognising their faces to be the face of her God.

A few weeks ago I visited one of Mother Teresa's Sisters who was admitted for surgery in the PGI hospital in Chandigarh. Haryana Chief Secretary Urvashi Gulati and the Principal Secretary to the Governor accompanied me that morning to Sister Ann Vinita's bedside. Attending to her in the hospital were two companion Sisters of the Missionaries of Charity. In the course of conversation, one of them said that she was really happy to meet me. She went on to explain that as a young woman in Kerala, she had admired Mother Teresa's work, but it was when she chanced to read my biography of Mother Teresa that she decided to join the Order. That a young Catholic woman should have read a book written by one, who while he was unmistakably close to Mother Teresa yet did not share her faith, stunned me into silence. It made me reflect on a number of issues related and unrelated: of the strength of secular values; and of true compassion knowing no religious, ethnic, caste or geographical boundaries, and indeed being able to transcend altogether the formal contours of religious practice.

Mother Teresa understood her environment acutely. She was no evangelist in the 19th century mould. She remained true to her religion till her last breath, but chose not to impose it on others. Never once during my 23-year-long association with her did she ever suggest that her religion was the only path, or that it was in any way superior. Yet she often reminded those around her of the power of prayer. If I occasionally remarked on some initiative she had taken as a “good idea,” she would reply with a teasing smile that if I learned to pray I would get a few good ideas too! She often urged those who came to her that they must be good Hindus or Muslims or Christians or Sikhs, and in that process must learn to “find God.”

It was indicative of her success that she understood that in an overwhelmingly non-Christian India, her path had to be a unique one. So while she never deviated from her faith, she reached out to millions of her special constituency: the poorest of the poor, the leprosy sufferers, abandoned children or the hungry and dying, recognising their faces to be the face of her God. Their religious persuasion, or even its absence, hardly concerned her. In her ability to have found the middle path in an environment that could have easily become hostile, lay her genius. I once asked the legendary Chief Minster of West Bengal, Jyoti Basu, what he an atheist and a Communist could possibly have in common with a Catholic nun for whom God was everything. With a smile, he replied: “We share a love for the poor.” India revered her and gave her abundantly of its honours, including the Bharat Ratna. On August 26, 2010, a five- rupee coin was released to commemorate her birth centenary.

Over the years I witnessed many incidents that I called “co-incidences” and which others might well call “miracles.” One day in the 1980s at Mother House in Kolkata, a rare medicine was needed to save the life of a child. In those days it was not manufactured in India. When hope was almost lost, and as the Sisters prayed, a carton of assorted leftover medicines was donated by an unknown benefactor. Right on top was the very drug that was needed. The child's life was saved.

On another occasion, Mother Teresa arrived in Delhi from abroad. I was at the airport to receive her. Her flight was late. As she got off, anxiety was writ over her face. “You must get me on the flight to Calcutta. There is a dying child here; I am carrying a new medicine.” I told Mother that was impossible. Her flight had been late, and the last Calcutta-bound Indian Airlines flight was boarding. Mother Teresa's own luggage was also yet to come. But as word spread at the airport, the seemingly impossible happened. The first few items of luggage on the conveyer belt happened to be her cardboard cartons (she never owned a suitcase!). Someone informed air traffic control of Mother Teresa's efforts. The pilot happened to be a Calcutta man. Suddenly I was asked if I could drive Mother Teresa in my car to the tarmac — and she caught her flight. I rang her the next morning. The child had been administered the medicine on her arrival, and was now out of danger. “It is a first-class miracle,” said Mother Teresa.

Far from once not believing in miracles, I am now in little doubt that Mother Teresa's life itself was a miracle. Witness the facts: as a child of 14 in her native Albania, her imagination was stirred by the stories she heard from the Jesuit Fathers of their work in distant Bengal; at 18, still a teenager, her mind was made up. She took leave of her own beloved mother and joined the Loreto Order of teaching nuns, her only means in the year 1928 of reaching India. It was an age when missionaries seldom returned home, and she was embarking on a life in a world of which she knew nothing. She was sent to Darjeeling for training. She learned to speak Bengali fluently. After almost 20 happy years as a teaching nun, she audaciously sought (and finally received) permission from the Vatican to become the first nun in the history of the Church to step outside convent walls, not as a lay person, but as a nun with her vows intact, to start a mission of her own. She had no helper, no companion, and no money to speak of. Imagine the Calcutta of 1948, overflowing with refugees after Partition, homelessness, poverty and disease everywhere. She wore no recognisable nun's habit; instead a sari, akin to that worn by municipal sweepresses, that cost one rupee. This is where she started her life's arduous mission.

We know where she left off. By the time she passed away in 1997, she had created her presence in 123 countries. She ran a multinational run by 5,000 nuns of her Order, without the help of government grants or Church assistance. She had been awarded every conceivable prize of distinction. She was as warmly received in palaces and chancelleries as she was in the slums and streets of the world's cities. People sometimes accuse her of converting others to her faith: surely then there was no need for her to set up a branch in the heart of the Vatican. She cajoled Pope John Paul II to carve out a soup kitchen next to his grand audience chamber. Anyone today can witness the queues of Rome's poor, who are fed their only hot meal every evening. A former British Prime Minister told me not long ago that when Mother Teresa visited him at Downing Street she always managed to get his aides overruled, and got everything she wanted — because it was always for ‘her poor.' In any event, by now it was difficult for Prime Ministers to say ‘no' to her, for she was recognised as the conscience-keeper of her age.

As a Hindu, armed only with a certain eclecticism, I found it took me longer than most others to understand that Mother Teresa was with Christ in each conscious hour, whether at Mass, or with each of those whom she tended. The Christ on her crucifix was not different from the one who lay dying at her hospice in Kalighat. There could be no contradiction in her oft-repeated words that one must reach out to one's neighbour.

For Mother Teresa, to love one's neighbour was to love God. This was what was essential to her, not the size of her mission or the power others perceived in her. “We are called upon not to be successful, but to be faithful,” she explained. Mother Teresa exemplified that faith — in prayer, in love, in service, and in peace.

(Navin Chawla, a former Chief Election Commissioner of India, is the author of Mother Teresa: The Authorised Biography.)

http://www.thehindu.com/opinion/lead/article2397132.ece?homepage=true#.TlezXB3vs9o.facebook

Re-post: if this doesn't warm your heart, you're awful.

 Play of the day! Selfless young fan returns ball to upset boy

There's hope for America's future yet!

In one of the most heartwarming scenes you'll ever see, a young Arizona Diamondbacks fan named Ian made Wednesday's play of the day at Chase Field after an even younger fan named Nicholas missed a ball thrown his way by Milwaukee Brewers second baseman Rickie Weeks(notes).

Though the dropped ball was instead handed to Ian by another person, he immediately recognized what he had to do after seeing Nicholas in a distraught state after botching an attempt at a souvenir. With an amazed audience looking on, Ian marched back down the stairs and graciously handed the baseball over to Nicholas, a Brewers fan, without any prodding from anyone else.

As Deadspin notes, "if this doesn't warm your heart, you're awful."



http://ca.sports.yahoo.com/mlb/blog/big_league_stew/post/Play-of-the-day-Selfless-young-fan-returns-ball?urn=mlb-wp13421

(re-post)- Recurring case of the idiot priest

Recurring case of the idiot priest

 Ordination changes many things about a man theologically, sociologically and emotionally. But there are some things the sacrament will not change. If you ordain an idiot, you wind up with an idiot priest.

Idiot priests, rather than loss of faith, have caused most of the cases I have encountered of people who have left the Catholic Church. Poorly-prepared or totally unprepared homilies are one major element, abuse is another, pastoral insensitivity in times of need is a big third, but by far the most faith-destructive encounters between idiot priests and the People of God occur in connection with the Sacrament of Reconciliation.

I know a woman whose journey away from Catholicism began as early as her first confession. The priest was nicknamed “Baby Jesus” by the other priests in the parish because “he thinks he’s God almighty.” His haughty disdain for her as a child taught her that God is not worthy of any form of relationship.

According to a news report from Kerala, India, a priest there has been reported to the police for slapping a nine-year-old girl. Her crime? The priest had decided that all the children of the parish must go to confession at least once every three months, and she admitted she had not.

In order to convince the children of the importance of celebrating God’s forgiving love, he allegedly sent one of them, perhaps the only one honest enough to admit to her “dereliction,” to the hospital with a swollen face and a loosened tooth. Besides not having any right to force others to receive the sacrament, he could not see the idiocy in thinking that punishment is the best way to teach the sacrament of forgiveness.

If that girl grows into a woman who avoids the Church, we will be able to accurately date the beginning of her departure to this past July 9.

Why do we over and over again hear from friends, family and the media about priests who drive people away from the Church? Isn’t a priest’s job to draw the sheep to the Good Shepherd?

Part of the problem is one of those sociological effects of ordination combined with idiocy. Most priests merely have status in the Christian community. Some priests enjoy status in the Christian community. If the priest is also an idiot, having status will merely make him more obviously ineffectual; if he enjoys having status, it will make him abusive and repulsive.

Such destructive men often get away with their idiocy because people are smart enough and faith-filled enough to know that our commitment is not to priests but to Christ. Others fear the status that priests have as somehow representing God almighty. So, people have often let priests get away with behavior they would not tolerate in anyone else. But, thanks in part to the abuse crisis in the Catholic Church, more people are willing to act.

Such a one is the father of that girl in Kerala. He went to the police to report the beating of his child. He acted as a normal parent rather than an idiot.

When idiot priests are allowed to inflict themselves upon the Church with impunity, people either leave the Church or at least distance themselves from it emotionally and socially. That is changing. More and more often, people are speaking up, refusing to be victimized or to leave. They confront the idiocy for the sake of protecting their faith. We need that confrontation. The likelihood of reforming idiot priests is low, but at least we can present ourselves as a Church that is not idiotic.

In one of his own less forgiving moments, the Lord said, “If any of you put a stumbling block before one of these little ones who believe in me, it would be better for you if a great millstone were fastened around your neck and you were drowned in the depth of the sea.”

The news report did not mention if the priest in question is practicing holding his breath. It did, however, say that he is preparing to bring his vigorous sacramental pedagogy to the United States. Since the slapping incident has become international news, he will likely have trouble securing a visa to enter that country. He may want to stay away in any case, since his mode of religious education can get him put in jail there, though that may happen in India anyway.

Where the Gospel, common sense and common decency cannot restrain idiot priests, common law must. Of course, the better solution would be to not ordain idiots in the first place, but that would require that we be free of idiot superiors and idiot bishops. But they are simply idiot priests who have “made good.” So, we must rely upon non-idiot clergy and laity to rein in the idiots for the sake of the “little ones” of whatever age.

Father William Grimm is a Tokyo-based priest and publisher of UCA News, and former editor-in-chief of “Katorikku Shimbun,” Japan’s Catholic weekly.

Source: ucanews.com


http://www.cathnewsindia.com/2011/07/15/the-recurring-case-of-the-idiot-priest/ 

( re-post) Aseem Chhabra : Terrorism is a constant

Aseem Chhabra Offers a weekly New York perspective on Indian issues
Terrorism is a constant

Our governments have little idea about how to eradicate those who are creating terror

Aseem Chhabra

Last week New York City witnessed a horrible tragedy. An eight-year old Hasidic Jewish boy was supposed to meet his mother in the afternoon, three blocks away from his summer camp, but he failed to show up. The city’s highly insulated, but tightly knit Hasidic community made major efforts to find the boy.

A few days later, a close circuit video led the police to the home of a Jewish man who confessed to killing the young boy, cutting his feet, which he stored in his freezer and then dismembering the rest of the child’s body. Marks on the boy’s arms indicated that he had put up resistance.

Even New York City’s police commissioner, Ray Kelly, who is used to handling the toughest terrorists and criminals, was visibly moved. “In this business, you see a lot of violence,” Kelly said at a press conference announcing the killer’s arrest. “Here, it defies all logic. That’s what is so disturbing about this case. It’s heartbreaking.”

I have been thinking about the young boy’s parents, what they must have gone through when he failed to show up, when he was supposed to see his mother. And now they will have to live with the tragedy for the rest of their lives.

Last week, there was the horrible news from Mumbai. The three bomb blasts on Tuesday evening left 18 people dead and over hundred injured. The last person to die was a 24-year-old man, who must have been someone’s son, brother, husband or father. It is hard to fathom what this young man’s family must have gone through on Tuesday night trying to locate him and now knowing that he will never come back.

Such thoughts take me back to the harrowing scene in Mani Ratnam’s Bombay when the film’s protagonists, played by Arvind Swamy and Manisha Koirala, search for their twin boys as Mumbai burns in the aftermath of the 1993 riots, and A R Rahman’s hypnotic background score silences their helpless voices. I have never been in a war zone, or witnessed a riot or a bomb explosion, but I always imagine it would be a scenario like the one created by Ratnam.

The night of the bombings there seemed to be a lot of anger that once again Mumbai had been targeted by terrorists.

Later, journalist Naresh Fernandes suggested in his thoughtful piece on The New Yorker’s website that a certain amount of cynicism had crept into the soul of Mumbai. But I would like to believe that many Mumbaikars still care for and feel the pain of those who have lost their loved ones.

We live in very difficult times. Death and destruction is in the news at all times from troubled spots in the world — Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iraq — and from within India (Kashmir, the North East or recently in Forbesganj, Bihar). Each time a person — man, woman and child dies — many family members mourn that death. Each of the 3,000 plus people, who died when Al Qaeda’s terrorists crashed their two planes in the World Trade Center’s Twin Towers, left behind survivors and layers of heartbreaking stories.

What is more troubling is that our governments have little idea about how to eradicate organizations and individuals who are hell bent on destruction, revenge and creating terror. Ten years and trillions of dollars later, the US claims it is winning the war against terror, especially after Osama Bin Laden’s death, but I believe terrorism is not going to end, and will be a way of life for us for decades into the future.

The day after the gruesome discovery of the young Hasidic boy’s death in Brooklyn, I was chatting with a friend on Twitter who has a young son. He had been following the case of the missing boy and was shaken up by the news. I suggested to him that he should go give his son an extra hug that night. We should feel blessed that we have our loved ones with us. For there are many whose family members will never come back home again.

http://www.bangaloremirror.com/index.aspx?page=article&sectid=36&contentid=2011071620110716200434286ef5d355

interesting ad campaigns from canada ( part-3): Catholic Church of Quebec-Annual Collection

( this post is updated on 15 june 2016, to include the 2016 ad campagin from Montreal dioease) 

Toujours ma paroisse :) Campagne de financement des paroisses

( intelligent use of émoticône / Emoticone :)

http://beta.ecdq.org/nouvelles/toujours-ma-paroisses-campagne-de-financement-des-paroisses-de-l’eglise-catholique-de-quebec/ 

https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/117Roj8vwuMRnD1KV0VqrskjQF3bPlMuec9jeAGJL46M/edit#slide=id.gac945181e_0_0