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The hopes and fears of all the year

28 Dec 2008 - Preaching the News for Sunday

Nearly two years ago, in April 2007, an undergraduate art student at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago unveiled a papier-mache sculpture of Barack Obama as a messianic figure, titled "Blessing." David Cordero, 24, made the sculpture for his senior show after noticing all the attention Obama had received since first hinting he might run for the presidency. Run Obama did, and win he did, and his election was overwhelmingly voted the top news story of the year by U.S. editors and news directors polled by the Associated Press. But as we prepare to celebrate the Savior's birth, Obama must contend with the almost messianic-like hope that many people hold for his presidency. Artist Cordero's explanation for creating his sculpture may prove a healthy cautionary tale: "All of this is a response to what I've been witnessing and hearing, this idea that Barack is sort of a potential savior that might come and absolve the country of all its sins. In a lot of ways it's about caution in assigning all these inflated expectations on one individual, and expecting them to change something that many hands have shaped." As Obama prepares to take office in a few weeks, he inherits a number of daunting challenges not of his own creation, not least of which is the nation's financial meltdown-voted the number-two story of the year in the AP poll. Obama will also be handed the long-running war in Iraq, another top-ten story of the year, not to mention the even longer-running war in Afghanistan. If that were not enough, the U.S. as well as other nations face the ongoing threat of terrorism, as demonstrated by another top story, the recent terrorist attack in Mumbai, India that killed 164 people. The historic political campaigns of two women-Hilary Clinton and Sarah Palin-also made the list of top-ten news stories. Though their campaigns were not victorious, both women finished the year with their political futures intact-Clinton as Obama's choice for U.S. Secretary of State, and Palin as a leading light of the conservative wing of the Republican Party. China and Russia were home to top stories of the year as well. China made the list for a triumph, its largely successful hosting of the Beijing Olympics, as well as a tragedy, a powerful earthquake in May that left more than 70,000 dead and led to the collapse of about 7,000 classrooms in shoddily built schools. The five-day Russian-Georgian war in August rounds out the list, a further reminder that Obama will inherit a number of complex and potentially volatile foreign-relations concerns. Stories that almost made the top ten included Cyclone Nargis, which killed more than 84,000 people in Myanmar; Hurricanes Gustav and Ike, which wreaked deadly damage in the Caribbean and on the U.S. Gulf Coast; and the seesaw fate of same-sex marriage in California, where a court ruling approving it was later overturned by a ballot measure. Several write-in votes were cast for two developments that occurred too late to be included on the AP ballot: the indictment of Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich and the efforts of struggling U.S. automakers to get a federal bailout. The alleged financial scam involving Bernard Madoff also was revealed too late to make the ballot. Several of the editors who voted commented on how two transcendent developments dominated the news in 2008. "As far as I am concerned, there were only two stories this year," wrote Linda Grist Cunningham of the Rockford (Illinois) Register Star. "Global economy collapses (sending every country into financial, political, and personal chaos) and Obama elected U.S. president, changing the way the America does business-financial, political, and personal." Source: Articles by Joel Roberts and David Crary for the Associated Press

automakers russia beijing olympics georgia cyclone nargis myanmar hurricane gustav hurricane ike same-sex marriage california bailout bernard madoff china sarah palin hilary clinton rod blagojevich barack obama david cordero school of the art institute of chicago associated press savior iraq war afghanistan war top-ten news stories terrorism mumbai global economy

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Disturbing the peace

29 Mar 2009 - Preaching the News for Sunday

The psalmist appeals to the greatness of God’s compassion to “wipe out my offense.” The government of South Africa may want to approach the Dalai Lama, known for his compassion, with a similar plea after having barred him from entering the country for a peace conference this week that was later cancelled because of the public outcry over the Dalai Lama’s exclusion. The government had said Monday that the Tibetan leader would not be allowed to come to South Africa to attend the conference, meant to promote the 2010 World Cup, because his presence would have distracted attention from South Africa and drawn it instead to the contentious debate over the status of Tibet. Two of South Africa’s Nobel Prize winners, Desmond Tutu, the retired Anglican archbishop, and former President F. W. de Klerk, condemned the government for giving in to pressure from China and said they would refuse to participate in the conference if the Tibetan leader were not there. The executive director of the Norwegian Nobel Committee, Geir Lundestad, also said he would stay away. “It is disappointing that South Africa, which has received so much solidarity from the world, doesn’t want to give that solidarity to others,” Lundestad said, referring to the decades-long fight against apartheid. South Africa is China's largest trading partner on a continent in which China is heavily and increasingly involved. China’s exports to Africa last year rose 36.3 percent from 2007 to $50.8 billion, while imports of African goods rose 54 percent to $56 billion, according to customs data reported by Xinhua, the Chinese state news agency. “South Africa is a newly emerging country and China is giving it considerable economic resources so it is understandable,” said Samdhong Rinpoche, the prime minister of the Tibetan government-in-exile Monday in Dharmsala, India. “Every country has to protect its economic and political interests.” After the cancellation Roman Catholic Cardinal Wilfrid Napier told the SAPA news agency: “I am concerned that this man of peace is not allowed into our country at this time when we need people of peace to inspire us. I’m very concerned that our rights to association, freedom of religion, and freedom of expression have been sold out to economic and political expedience once again.” Sources: Articles by Celia W. Dugger for the New York Times, Donna Bryson for the Associated Press, and Agence Presse France

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China takes hard line on software

14 Jun 2009 - Preaching the News for Sunday

Christ's sacrificial offering of himself serves to "cleanse our consciences," says the reading from the Letter to the Hebrews. The Chinese government, saying it wants to cleanse computers of "unhealthy information," has issued a sweeping directive requiring all personal computers sold in the country to include sophisticated software that allows the government to control an ever-changing list of banned websites. Free-speech advocates say the new software could make it even more difficult for China's 300 million Internet users to access uncensored news and information. The rules, issued last month, heighten Internet restrictions that are already among the most stringent in the world. China regularly blocks websites that discuss the Dalai Lama, the 1989 crackdown on Tiananmen Square protesters, and Falun Gong, a banned spiritual movement. "This is a very bad thing," said Charles Mok, chairman of the Internet Society, an advocacy group in Hong Kong. "It's like downloading spyware onto your computer, but the government is the spy." In recent months China has tightened its Internet restrictions, including an "anti-vulgarity" campaign that has closed down thousands of pornographic sites but also shuttered nonsexual sites, including some of the most popular bulletin boards and blog hosts. China already employs more than 30,000 censors and thousands others who "guide public opinion" by flooding bulletin boards with comments favorable to the Communist Party. Last week, as the 20th anniversary of the Tiananmen protests approached, the government blocked a host of Internet services, including Twitter, Microsoft's live.com, and Flickr, a photo-sharing site. Youtube has been inaccessible here since March. The use of blocking software is not the first time foreign companies have been enlisted in Chinese government efforts to police the Internet. Google already blacks out politically sensitive results yielded by its popular search engine, Microsoft allows censors to block content on its blog service, and Yahoo was widely criticized for turning over information that was used to jail a journalist. The U.S. government has been meeting with industry groups to discuss the issue, said Susan Stevenson, a spokeswoman for the U.S. Embassy in Beijing. "We would view with concern any attempt to restrict the free flow of information," Stevenson said. "Such steps would be incompatible with China's aspirations to build a modern, information-based economy and society. The U.S. is concerned about actions that seek to restrict access to the Internet as well as restrictions on the internationally recognized right to freedom of expression." Source: Articles by David Pierson for the Los Angeles Times and Andrew Jacobs for the New York Times

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Pulling up the welcome mat

12 Jul 2009 - Preaching the News for Sunday

When sending his disciples out two by two in this Sunday's gospel, Jesus suggests they will not be welcomed in all places. Some ethnic groups in western China do not welcome each other's presence, a state of affairs that contributed this week to ethnic riots and street battles that have killed at least 156 people and injured many hundreds more. Clashes over the past several days have paralyzed Urumqi, the capital of Xinjiang province, with minority Uighur and Han Chinese mobs roaming the streets and attacking each other. The violence forced President Hu Jintao to cut short a trip to Italy where he was to take part in a Group of Eight summit--an unprecedented move by a Chinese leader. The government responded to the violence by pouring columns of troops into the far-flung, oil-rich province, where helmeted troops in riot gear swarmed Urumqi's central square. Local Communist Party chief Li Zhi said in a televised news conference that many people had been arrested, including students. "To those who committed crimes with cruel means, we will execute them," he said, adding that government forces would crack down on any security risk. More than 1,100 people were wounded in the violence, and hundreds of vehicles were damaged or set on fire in rioting. An air of chaos still permeated the city Wednesday. Oil production and increased industrialization have led to an influx of Han Chinese to the region, exacerbating existing tensions between the two groups. Public Security Minister Meng Jiangzhu repeated the government's accusations that the unrest was masterminded by overseas separatist groups. China has specifically accused U.S.-exiled Uighur activist Rebiya Kadeer and her overseas followers of being behind the violence. Kadeer has denied the allegations and accused China of inciting the violence among Urumqi's 2.3 million residents. Source: An article by William Foreman for Associated Press

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The weather outside is frightful

08 Nov 2009 - Preaching the News for Sunday

Elijah promises the starving woman in this Sunday's reading from 1 Kings that the Lord will not let the jar of flour go empty or the jug of oil run dry until the day the Lord sends rain. Chinese meteorologists took matters into their own hands, easing a drought by seeding rainclouds with silver iodide. The "Weather Modification Office" sprayed clouds with 186 doses of the chemical over the weekend to produce rain for the wheat crop. A cold front then caused heavy snow, China's earliest snowfall in decades. Snow fell over Beijing for 11 hours Sunday and disrupted road, rail, and air travel. Cloud seeding is often used in China in an attempt to bring on rain. Much of the country's farming still relies on rainfall because many of its communities have poor irrigation systems. In addition to cloud seeding, the government is building a huge network of tunnels and waterways that will funnel water from the south to the north, but the project is still five years from completion. Source: Articles by TimesOnline.co.uk

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No smooth sailing for president in Asia

22 Nov 2009 - Preaching the News for Sunday

This Sunday's reading from the Book of Revelation, speaking of Jesus, promises that "every eye will see him." But when it came time for President Barack Obama's much-ballyhooed "town hall meeting" during a visit to China this week, Chinese authorities carefully limited who could participate in or view it. The rest of his Asian trip was an equally mixed bag, analysts said. Chinese authorities largely hijacked the supposed give-and-take with Chinese students at the Shanghai gathering by stuffing the auditorium with young Communist Party aspirants. Access to a broadcast of the event was strictly limited. Obama did manage to offer a veiled critique of China's rigid controls and restrictions on the Internet and free speech but without mentioning, let alone condemning, China's government. Obama and Chinese president Hu Jintao presented two days of talks as substantive, even though they didn't appear to make much progress on issues like Iran, monetary policy, or human rights. Obama did, nonetheless, give an interview to Southern Weekly, one of China's most popular newspapers, sometimes known for poking the authorities by breaking news on delicate subjects. Obama's stop in Japan earlier in the trip went better. Tokyo welcomed him as much as a celebrity as a world leader, with cries of "Obama-san!" from the people who gathered in the rain to watch his motorcade pass. And the critical chatter from right-wing bloggers back at home over Obama's deep bow to Emperor Akhito did not seem to detract from the trip. Obama's aides said he was unfazed by the criticism. The president ended his trip with a stop Wednesday in South Korea, a longtime ally that has been cooperating with the United States on vital issues like North Korea. Source: An article by Helene Cooper and Martin Fackler for the New York Times

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Climactic moment on climate change?

13 Dec 2009 - Preaching the News for Sunday

"What then should we do?" was the question on the minds of John the Baptist's listeners we learn in this Sunday's gospel. It is also the question at the forefront of the debate over global warming. Political leaders and scientists gathered in Copenhagen this week for an international climate summit some dub the world's "last chance" to control warming. At the same time the conference was getting underway the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced Monday that greenhouse gases are endangering people's health and must be regulated. The move puts pressure on Congress to act on stalled climate legislation. The ruling paves the way for regulation of carbon dioxide emissions from vehicles, power plants, factories, refineries, and other major sources. Industry groups quickly criticized the decision, saying that the regulation of carbon dioxide would be legally and technically complex and would impose huge costs across the economy. EPA administrator Lisa Jackson said that the finding was driven by the weight of scientific evidence that the planet was warming and that human activity was largely responsible. Jackson waded into the current dispute over leaked e-mail messages from a British climate research group that have stirred doubts among some people about the integrity of climate science. "We know that skeptics have and will continue to try to sow doubts about the science," she said. "It's no wonder that many people are confused. But raising doubts--even in the face of overwhelming evidence--is a tactic that has been used by defenders of the status quo for years." Worldwide the vast majority of increased greenhouse-gas emissions is expected to come from developing countries such as China and India. But those countries have made it clear that their willingness to reduce growth in emissions will depend on what wealthier countries do first. That puts a spotlight on the U.S. in Copenhagen, observers said, and the EPA announcement was timed to boost the Obama administration's case that the U.S. is indeed taking action to combat global warming even though Congress has yet to act. In conjunction with the Copenhagen summit churches around the world this Sunday will ring their bells as part of what is being called "Hopenhagen," a call to action and prayer in response to climate change. Source: Articles by John M. Broder for the New York Times, Dina Cappiello and H. Josef Herbert for the Associated Press, Jeffrey Ball and Charles Forelle for the Wall Street Journal, and Ecumenical News International

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Chinese men soon may have wedding-bell blues

17 Jan 2010 - Preaching the News for Sunday

The wedding at Cana, Jesus' first miracle, is reported in this Sunday's gospel. More than 24 million Chinese men of marrying age could find themselves without spouses in 2020, Chinese state media reported on Monday, citing a study that blamed sex-specific abortions as a major factor. "Sex-specific abortions remained extremely commonplace, especially in rural areas," where the cultural preference for boys over girls is strongest, the study said, while noting the reasons for the gender imbalance were "complex." Researcher said the skewed birth ratio could lead to difficulties for men with lower incomes in finding spouses, as well as a widening age gap between partners. The study said the key contributing factors to the phenomenon included the nation's family-planning policy, which restricts the number of children citizens may have, in addition to an insufficient social security system. The situation influences people to seek male offspring, who are preferred for their greater earning potential as adults and thus their ability to care for their elderly parents. Source: Articles by Agence France Presse and the Global Times (China)

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China center stage on Jesuit’s rare map

21 Feb 2010 - Preaching the News for Sunday

Moses reminds the people in this Sunday’s first reading that before the Lord led them out of Egypt they had “lived there as an alien.” A rarely seen 400-year-old map of the world drawn by another “alien,” Italian missionary Matteo Ricci, S.J., is on display through April at the Library of Congress. In the early 1600s Ricci was among the first Westerners to live in what is now Beijing. Known for introducing Western science to China, Ricci created the map in 1602 at the request of the Chinese emperor. The map places China at the center of the world. The map identifies Florida as “the Land of Flowers.” It includes pictures and annotations describing different regions of the world. Africa was noted to have the world’s highest mountain and longest river. The brief description of North America mentions “humped oxen” or bison, wild horses, and a region named “Ka-na-ta.” Several Central and South American places are named, including “Wa-ti-ma-la” (Guatemala), “Yu-ho-t’ang” (Yucatan), and “Chih-li” (Chile). Ricci gave a brief description of the discovery of the Americas: “In olden days, nobody had ever known that there were such places as North and South America or Magellanica,” he wrote, using a label that early mapmakers gave to Australia and Antarctica. “But a hundred years ago, Europeans came sailing in their ships to parts of the sea coast, and so discovered them.” The Ricci map gained the nickname the “Impossible Black Tulip of Cartography” because it was so hard to find. It measures 12 feet by 5 feet and is printed on six rolls of rice paper. The Library of Congress rarely exhibits artifacts it does not own because its holdings are so vast, but curators made an exception for the Ricci map. It is being shown publicly for the first time in North America. An article by Brett Zongker for the Associated Press

china maps matteo ricci jesuits library of congress

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Mining miracle in China, tragedy in Appalachia

11 Apr 2010 - Preaching the News for Sunday

This Sunday's reading from the Book of Acts tells us that "signs and wonders" were done at the hands of the apostles. While China celebrates what one mine safety expert called "one of the most amazing rescues in the history of mining anywhere" this week, a West Virginia mining community is in shock and mourning following a mine explosion Monday that left at least 25 miners dead and four missing. Chinese rescuers pulled 115 miners to safety from a flooded coal mine Monday more than a week after they were trapped. Some of the miners survived by hanging from straps above flood waters. But the news was far grimmer at the Upper Big Branch mine just south of Charleston, W. Va., which has a long history of safety violations. The coal mine owner's dismal safety record, along with several recent evacuations of the mine, left federal officials and miners suggesting that Monday's explosion should have been preventable. In the past two months miners had been evacuated three times from the Upper Big Branch mine because of dangerously high methane levels, according to two miners who asked for anonymity for fear of losing their jobs. The Massey Energy Company, the biggest coal mining business in central Appalachia and the owner of the Upper Big Branch mine, has drawn sharp scrutiny and fines from regulators over its safety and environmental record. The company defended its record after the explosion, but angry local residents claim safety was neglected in the push for higher production. Massey and its outspoken chief executive, Don L. Blankenship, have long been lightning rods for criticism among environmentalists, labor leaders, and lawmakers, observers said. Blankenship has called congressional Democrats seeking climate-change legislation "greeniacs" and has said, "I don't believe that climate change is real." His opposition to organized mine labor--the Upper Big Branch coal mine is not unionized--has also earned him the enmity of union leaders. Rescue efforts continued midweek for the missing mineworkers as ventilation holes were drilled to vent enough poisonous gas to safely get inside and look for the missing miners. But hopes were slim. West Virginia Gov. Joe Manchin III described the explosion as "horrific" and state and federal officials said it would be a "miracle" if anyone survived. The scene was dramatically different in China, where state-run broadcasters gave heavy coverage to the dramatic mine rescue Monday, which also happened to be "tomb-sweeping day," a national holiday to honor the dead. Hope is fading for 29 other miners still trapped in the flooded Wangjialing mine in Shanxi province. The minors were trapped on March 28 when workers digging tunnels broke into a water-filled abandoned shaft. A preliminary investigation last week found the mine's managers ignored water leaks before the accident. China's mining industry is the deadliest in the world: Accidents killed 2,631 coal miners last year and a record 6,995 in 2002. Source: Articles by Ian Urbina and Michael Cooper for the New York Times, Peter Foster for Telegraph.co.uk, Gillan Wong for Associated Press, and Steven Mufson, Jerry Markon, and Ed O'Keefe for the Washington Post

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