Contact Us Free Sample

Search

New user tutorial

Log In

New subscriber?

Create your password

Not a subscriber?

Subscribe

OR

Log In

Email

Password

I forgot my password

Sorry... user email or password wrong, please try again!

We’re sorry, but that email address is not in our system. If you are certain that you have entered the address you used to register for your PTW account, please contact us to confirm that we have entered it correctly in our system.

User Account Expired

Uh-oh. According to our records your subscription to Prepare the Word is no longer active. Did you forget to renew? If so, please click the RENEW button below. If not and you believe there is an error with your account, please contact us here.

My Account

Renew My Susbcription

| Sign Up

Home
About
HOMILY PREP
LIBRARY
Take Five for Faith
How to
My Account

Home
About
HOMILY PREP
LIBRARY
Take Five for Faith
How to
My Account

Search

Search word or phrase

Search word or phrase

Any word Exact phrase

Limit results to the following...

Sundays

Exploring The Word

Homilies

Homily Stories

Take Five Daily and Weekly

Preaching the News

Pastoral trends

Quotes

Tags

Question Catholics Ask

Results

Developing world work stoppage

15 Mar 2009 - Preaching the News for Sunday

When Jesus speaks in this Sunday's gospel of raising up the temple in three days, he is not talking about a construction project. But such projects in developing countries are grinding to a halt, victims of the worldwide economic downturn. Private money invested in so-called emerging countries plunged from $928 billion in 2007 to $466 billion last year and is likely to fall to $165 billion this year, according to the Institute of International Finance. The value of global financial assets including stocks, bonds, and currencies probably fell by more than $50 trillion in 2008, equivalent to a year of world gross domestic product, according to an Asian Development Bank report. "The loss of financial wealth is enormous, and the consequences for the economies of the world will be unfortunately commensurate," said study author Claudio Loser, now the Latin American president of strategic advisory firm Centennial Group Inc. Growth in 2009 may drop by half in developing and emerging countries, and a recovery in the global economy may only begin late this year or in early 2010, Loser said. "This crisis is the first truly universal one in the history of humanity," former IMF Managing Director Michel Camdessus said. "No country escapes from it. It has not yet bottomed out." Source: An article by Shamim Adam for Bloomberg.com

worldwide investment institute of international finance asian development bank claudio loser developing emerging countries michel camdessus international monetary fund centennial group inc
When one plus one does not equal two

Short essays about observed trends in Roman Catholic life - Pastoral trends

It is not uncommon for a school, parish, or even religious community to be closed and merged into a neighboring school, parish, or religious community. What is uncommon is for the result to have more active students, attenders, or members than the previous entities had when they were separate. In some cases that is simply because combining declining schools, parishes, or religious communities cannot mask the overall trend: they are passing away. In other cases, sadly, underlying negative trends may be heightened precisely by the merger itself. In other words, the medicine may be worse than the disease. That is not to deny pressing financial exigencies: Sometimes the only thing that can be done is to combine, risks and all, so that the mission may continue. But consider: When a community is declining, does it always make sense to expend energy in order to prolong it just a few years more? Are there other ways, so to speak, to give once-proud structures, organizations, and communities a joyful Christian burial? Could the energy spent in keeping these dying models alive be given to new initiatives that might be more firmly rooted in the realities of our time and the foreseeable future? And when a hasty merger of two schools, parishes, religious communities, or other ecclesial entities happens, only to have the overall health of the successor entity decrease more rapidly than previously, how much was really saved? © 2012, Bryan Froehle.

Authors Bryan Froehle

reconfiguration merging

Restricted

Take Five for Faith Daily

Wednesday
January 29

Provide a strong foundation

During Catholic Schools Week we remember and are thankful for the fact that the tradition of Catholic schools remains the same: “A Catholic education is an education for life.” A Catholic education, whether on Sundays or five days a week, provides the foundation and the tools young people need to grow into faithful followers of Christ. The patron saint of teachers, John Baptist de la Salle, put it best: “Enter to learn, leave to serve.” Support your local Catholic schools!

© 2025 - TrueQuest Communications, LLC. All rights reserved.

Website by ideaPort, LLC

Wait

Success

Error

We have detected that cookies are turned off in your browser settings. To ensure you have the best experience, we recommend that you change your settings to permit cookies for this website.

Get Help