The current numbers are staggering: 2.5 billion people lack adequate sanitary facilities; 849 million practice open defecation.

In Southeast Asia, that means 38 percent of the population; in sub-Saharan Africa, 25 percent meet their needs without safety and privacy.

More people have mobile phones than toilets.

Half of them are female.

The United Nations presented its Millennial Development Goals in 2000. A recently released UNICEF report, "Progress for Children," surveys successes and failures in meeting those goals. It is a pretty dismal read.

For example: Despite all efforts, 1 billion people live in extreme poverty, nearly half under the age of 18; female youths are almost twice as likely to be illiterate as their male counterparts; girls account for nearly two-thirds of adolescent HIV/AIDS infections.

These statistics show improvement. Things may be getting better, but things are getting worse for the poorest, especially for women and girls.

So as madmen wander around beheading and blowing up people in their demented search for both world domination and the blessings of their God, little girls in simple villages have no bathrooms, no education, and exponential chances of dying of AIDS.

Every culture has its priorities. The developed West is beginning to understand it must respect the planet. But it is one thing to "go green" and quite another to respect the human person.

Apparently, it is even more difficult to respect the female human person. The stupidities of the developed world — the noise that masquerades as music, the intense interest in epicurean delights, the unending search for pleasures of every description — turn eyes and minds from the needs of people, real people, who are suffering.

Facts of life: There are just too many people living in absolute poverty. There are just too many people lacking education, lacking shelter, lacking water. Continue reading

Sources

• National Catholic Reporter
• Image: Water Aid

The same may be said of the planet as a whole.

Whether intellectually or intuitively, many are asking the same question: Where are we heading?

How do we explain the long list of financial, environmental and humanitarian emergencies, epidemics, small and larger conflicts, genocides, war crimes, terrorist attacks and military interventions?

Why does the international community seem powerless to prevent any of this?

There is no simple or single answer to this conundrum, but two factors can shed much light.

The first involves a global power shift and the prospect of a new Cold War.

The second relates to globalisation and the crises generated by the sheer scale of cross-border flows.

Is a new Cold War in the making?

The geopolitical shift has resulted in a dangerous souring of America's relations with Russia and China.

The dispute over Ukraine is the latest chapter in the rapidly deteriorating relationship between Washington and Moscow.

In what is essentially a civil war in which over 3,000 people have been killed, the two great powers have chosen to support opposing sides in the conflict by all means short of outright intervention.

The incorporation of Crimea into Russia, Moscow's decision to use force in Georgia in 2008 and its support for the independence of the two breakaway regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia are part of the same dynamic.

The conduct of Russian governments in the Putin era has been at times coercive and often clumsy at home and abroad.

But the United States has also much to answer for. For the last 25 years its foreign policy has been unashamedly triumphalist.

In his 1992 State of the Union address, President George Bush senior declared: "By the grace of God, America won the Cold War". Continue reading

Source

• Joseph Camilleri in The Conversation

Joseph Camilleri OAM was the founding Director of the Centre for Dialogue, La Trobe University.

Archbishop Brown said that young Irish seminarians he met at St Patrick's College, the national seminary in Maynooth, and in Rome, showed a "renewed enthusiasm for their faith". That may well be true, but the numbers are miniscule.

Figures on the bishops' own website show the age profile of Irish priests. Over 65 per cent of Irish priests are aged 55 or over.

There are only two priests under the age of 40 in the Archdiocese of Dublin.

A priest in Killala diocese, Fr Brendan Hoban, pointed out that there has been a priest and celebration of the Eucharist in his parish -Moygownagh - since the eighth century.

But he believes he will be that last priest in that parish.

At the moment there is a priest in every parish in Killala. Within 20 years there will be seven serving 22 parishes spread out over a wide area. The situation is much same in other dioceses.

The research points out that to maintain the status quo would mean ordaining 82 priests each year.

The reality is that 20 students entered Maynooth in September 2013. It is likely that only 10 or 12 will be ordained in 2020. Continue reading.

Seán McDonagh is a Columban missionary priest, well known author and speaker, and a spokesman for the Association of Catholic Priests in Ireland.

Source: Tablet Blog

Image: Percy French Festival

In less than a year, Pope Francis has transformed the dominant discourse around Catholicism from scandal and despair to joy and the evangelical demands in light of poverty and economic exclusion.

"Each individual Christian and every community," he wrote in Evangelii Gaudium last week, "is called to be an instrument of God for the liberation and promotion of the poor, and for enabling them to be fully a part of society."

This is a powerful and radical understanding of where the church is called to be in light of the Gospel of Christ and the joy of the Holy Spirit.

As if this was not enough of a contrast to the rampant consumerism of the pre-Christmas shopping season, we hear rumours this week that the pope may be going out to Rome at night to do acts of charity—unbelievable.

This week, as the Council of Cardinals begins its second meeting in Rome they will begin to examine each Vatican office—hopefully with an eye to how to make them more "mission-oriented."

In lead up to this meeting, I had the chance to work with an international group of Catholic intellectuals and social activists to formulate concrete proposals for curial reform. The full proposal, which was shared with several "super cardinals" as a White Paper of ICMICA-Pax Romana and an opinion article in the Catholic Information Service for Africa focuses on three areas. Continue reading.

Kevin Glauber Ahern, PhD is an assistant professor of religious studies at Manhattan College. He served as the President of the International Movement of Catholic Students (IMCS-Pax Romana) and is Vice-President of the ICMICA-Pax Romana.

The White Paper's Executive Summary can be found here.

Source: DailyTheology

Image: Franco Origlia/Getty Images

The "First Church" was that of the original disciples and the generations that followed them, centred on the Mediterranean and making the first missionary advances into lands and cultures outside of Israel.

The men and women of that First Church bequeathed to us many treasures: the New Testament, the core elements of our worship, our philosophical and theological systems and our commitment to engage in dialogue with the religions, philosophies and cultures of the world.

From Euro-centric to a truly worldwide Church
The missionary endeavours of those early centuries led to the development of the "Second Church," centred in Europe. It was the Church of mass Christianity. Societies and cultures were shaped by the Christian commitment of rulers and people. The "outside world" of non-belief was geographically and psychologically remote and marginal to daily life.

When it was encountered, it was often as an enemy, but always as an object of proselytisation. We still live in that Church, but increasingly find ourselves moving in a new situation, a new Church, the Third Church.

This new Church has no geographic centre because it is worldwide. The statistics tell the story. In 1910, 80 percent of the world's Christians lived in Europe and North America. Today, a century later, the majority of us live in Africa, Asia and Latin America, with less than 40 percent of us in the West. In just five years between 2004 and 2009, the number of Catholics in Asia increased by nearly 11 percent.

The missionary thrust from Christ through the first and second Churches has carried us beyond borders of races, nations and cultures. For many Catholics, perhaps the first inklings of change came during Vatican II when photos of the world's bishops showed faces from Africa, Asia and Latin America.

What is distinctive about this Church? Western Christians usually do not even notice how deeply their Christianity has been shaped by religious traditions and cultures that pre-dated the preaching of the Gospel in Europe. So too are the Churches of Africa, Asia, Latin America and the Pacific being shaped by religions and cultures that preachers of the Gospel encountered there.

That means ideas of God, of holiness, of worship, of community, of ministry — of everything that makes a Church — are gradually becoming radically different from what has been "normal" for more than a millennium and a half. Cherished and time honoured traditions and formulations of faith are being called into question.

The Third Church: New styles emerging
The Third Church lives in the midst of varied beliefs or unbelief, with little or decreasing political, social and cultural power. This is leading to new styles of worship, of theologising, of community, of evangelisation.

Since Christians of the Third Church, especially in Asia, are often a powerless and sometimes persecuted minority in their societies, they tend to view the role of the Church and its institutional forms from a different perspective from that of the West, where the Church is only now beginning to lose political, moral and intellectual power.

Asia's Christians face questions that Western Christians have not faced in centuries, if ever. As they struggle to find answers to new questions, some of those answers will appear inadequate to those who faced and answered different questions. Some will actually be inadequate, as inadequate as Western theological formulas and practices.

Our theology of the Trinity, for example, may take unforeseen directions as Indian Christians try to explain what we believe about God using Indian rather than Greek philosophic modes of thought.

The Third Church and the West: Joy and fear
On various levels, people in the Churches of the West (which are still in charge) have had mixed reactions to the coming of the Third Church. Sometimes, there is rejoicing that the Holy Spirit is working in new ways in new places. Sometimes, there is fear of the unknown and a refusal to allow others to make their own mistakes as the West made its own.

Much of Catholic history since Vatican II can be read as a series of attempts to protect the Second Church from the changes that are coming with the Third Church. Many times, the phenomenon is ignored. But, love it or fear it, a new Church is being born. It will take several lifetimes, but eventually Christianity throughout the world will be different.

Yet, as the characteristics of this Third Church gradually but with increasing momentum develop, we continue to live in varying degrees within the Second Church. The result is a tension within the People of God, within our institutions and within ourselves.

The tensions in the period of overlap between the first and second Churches gave birth to creative and enduring ways to be Church (notably monasticism). Likewise, the transition period in which we live will, under the Holy Spirit, give birth to now undreamed of ways to be Church.

Centuries from now we will be looked upon as the early Christians of what will in the future be the normal, everyday way to follow and proclaim Christ. We may be envied for having lived in an exciting time of transition. We will be misunderstood. We may be vilified for getting so much wrong and bequeathing structures and ways of thinking, acting and worship that seem constricting and short-sighted. We will be grist for whatever may be the equivalent of doctoral dissertations.

Anyone who believes that God is at work in the Church should be aware of what is happening. We must pay attention to the Churches throughout the world, learning from them and praying with and for them. Reading and visiting (in some places this might only entail crossing town to a different neighbourhood) are important tools.

It would be a shame to miss one of the biggest events in the history of Christianity because we thought the way we have been is the way to be.

Fr William Grimm is the publisher of ucanews.com and is based in Tokyo

Source: UCA News

Photo: UCA News

The liberal conference is sponsored by the American Catholic Council and is expected to be one of the biggest gatherings of left-leaning Catholics in years.

The three-day event that will attract high-profile critics of the church and about 2,000 Catholics from around the world to Detroit.

Archdiocese of Detroit is supporting a more conservative conference in Livonia, which will feature speakers who will critique the American Catholic Council's vision and explain the church's views.

Archbishop of Detroit Allen Vigneron urged Catholics to stay away from the liberal conference and in a letter to priests and deacons, threatening "defrocking" may be a consequence.

Vigneron said he made "attempts to engage in a dialogue with (the American Catholic Council) about this planned event," but "the organizers of this conference have not replied to me directly."

American Catholic Council, an organization of 30 Catholic reform groups across the U.S., comes on the 35th anniversary of a gathering in Detroit to talk about church reforms led by then-Cardinal John Dearden, the former archbishop of Detroit.

The conference is expected to call for more democratic decision-making in the church and the possibility of allowing women into the priesthood, as well as married priests.

The competing conferences come at a time of growing concern about people leaving the Catholic Church. Almost one of three people raised as Catholic in the U.S. have left the church, according to a 2008 study by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life. Catholics have experienced the greatest percentage-point loss of members of any major religion or denomination.

Both sides agree there's a problem, but they disagree on the solution. At the heart of the conflict is this question: What does it mean to be Catholic in the 21st century?

Source:

• USA Today