In Greece, which is in its fifth year of recession, such suicides have sparked violent clashes between police and those opposing austerity who have held the victims up as martyrs. In Italy, widows of businessmen who have committed suicide ”” such as builder Giuseppe Campaniello, who set himself on fire outside a government tax office in Bologna on March 28 after his company collapsed ”” have held demonstrations. And in Ireland, where citizens are jumping off quays in Dublin, Cork and Limerick in alarming numbers, the mobile telephone company Vodaphone volunteered to give up the stadium advertising space it bought at soccer and hurling games for a suicide prevention campaign.

So many people have been killing themselves and leaving behind notes citing financial hardship that European media outlets have a special name for them: “economic suicides.” Surveys are also showing increasing signs of mental stress: a jump in the use of antidepressants and illicit drugs, a rise in depression and anxiety among workers worried about salary cuts or being laid off, and an increase in the use of sick leave due to psychological problems.

“People are more and more uncertain about their future, which is leading to a sharp rise in mental health problems,” said Maria Nyman, director of Brussels-based Mental Health Europe, a multinational coalition of mental health organizations and educational institutions.

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Each summer for the past several years I have spent some time witnessing to Mormons. This necessarily involves some apologetics, which is not a part I particularly relish. These days I am content being a teacher, not a debater. But I am still just as passionate for truth.

I was reflecting this evening that while there is abundant external corroboration for the authors of the Biblical books, especially the New Testament, being historical persons, there is absolutely no external evidence for the existence of any of the authors of the various books contained in the Book of Mormon. Mormons will counter that these “prophets” lived in the ancient Americas, not the Greco-Roman world, but that does not eliminate the problem that, unlike the Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments, there is no documentation anywhere outside the pages of the Book of Mormon that the figures contained in it (and the purported authors of its various books), as well as the church and civilization in which they supposedly lived, ever existed.

In contrast, the writers of the New Testament were known by and attested to by numerous witnesses.

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O God, who hast taken to thyself the blessed Virgin Mary, mother of thine incarnate Son: Grant that we, who have been redeemed by his blood, may share with her the glory of thine eternal kingdom; through the same thy Son Jesus Christ our Lord, who liveth and reigneth with thee, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever.

O Lord God, who dost call thy servants to ventures of which we cannot see the ending, by paths as yet untrodden, through perils unknown: Give us faith to go out with good courage, not knowing whither we go, but only that thy hand is leading us, and thy love supporting us; to the glory of thy name.

Now in these days when the disciples were increasing in number, the Hellenists murmured against the Hebrews because their widows were neglected in the daily distribution. And the twelve summoned the body of the disciples and said, “It is not right that we should give up preaching the word of God to serve tables. Therefore, brethren, pick out from among you seven men of good repute, full of the Spirit and of wisdom, whom we may appoint to this duty. But we will devote ourselves to prayer and to the ministry of the word.” And what they said pleased the whole multitude, and they chose Stephen, a man full of faith and of the Holy Spirit, and Philip, and Proch’orus, and Nica’nor, and Ti’mon, and Par’menas, and Nicola’us, a proselyte of Antioch. These they set before the apostles, and they prayed and laid their hands upon them. And the word of God increased; and the number of the disciples multiplied greatly in Jerusalem, and a great many of the priests were obedient to the faith.

–Acts 6:1-7

One of the leading lights of the pro-life movement in the United States has gone out. Nellie Gray, the charismatic octogenarian founder of the annual March for Life in Washington, D.C., the largest annual pro-life event in the country, passed away over the weekend, and was discovered in her apartment earlier today.

Gray, who was once described by Cardinal Sean O’Malley as the “Joan of Arc” of the pro-life movement, was an ubiquitous figure at the pro-life march every year, her slight frame standing at the podium at stage centre, introducing the many luminaries who addressed the crowd of several hundred thousand during the rally before the march.

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Attached to the bishop’s letter was a series of points as to why voters should consider repealing the law under Referendum 74. Stating that the new marriage law does not expand but redefines marriage in terms of a relationship between two people, the American prelate stated that such a change would cause marriage to lose its unique identity.

Another matter of concern was that a redefinition of marriage would inevitably lead to a redefinition of parenthood. The letter cited examples of similar laws passed in Spain and Canada, where traditional designations such as “mother” and “father” have been replaced with either “Parent 1 and Parent 2” or “Progenitor 1 and Progenitor 2.”

Words matter, Bishop Cupich stated, “especially words like mother and father, which have real depth and meaning. We lose a great deal when they are substituted by terms and designations not otherwise used. They are strange to the ear, but they also fail to convey what fathers and mothers each bring as male and female to the critical task of generating, rearing and educating their sons and daughters.”

Read it all and please take the time to read the full text of Bishop Blase Cupich’s letter.

The strains on contemporary marriage are many, given that traditional gender roles are in a dynamic state of flux. Some ”“ like Anne-Marie Slaughter ”“ are convinced that women can’t have it all due to competing demands between family and career.

These issues were similarly examined as part of a comprehensive study by the Institute for Social Policy and Understanding (ISPU), “Understanding Trends in American Muslim Divorce and Marriage,” authored by ISPU Fellow and University of Windsor law professor Julie Macfarlane. Over a four-year period, information was collected through interviews with Muslim community members, social workers and lawyers. While 25 per cent of the respondents were Canadian, there were no marked differences in trends between American and Canadian couples.

Divorce rates within North American Muslim communities have risen sharply over the past 25 years. While Muslim families face pressures common to all families, certain issues are unique to Muslim culture….

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The Kenya Anglican Youth Association (KAYO) is launching a nationwide initiative aimed at reaching one million young Kenyans and encouraging them to register and vote in Kenya’s general election on March 4, 2013.

The upcoming election will be Kenya’s first since 2007, when electoral disputes triggered ethnic violence that left about 1,500 people dead and 350,000 displaced from their homes.

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Watch it all courtesy of NASA.

Egypt’s new president has moved against his political foes with a ruthlessness that belies his reputation as a grey engineer. Last week’s attack on a military camp in Sinai, which cost the lives of 16 soldiers, created an opening that Mohammed Morsi, the first freely elected leader in Egypt’s five millennia of recorded history, exploited with alacrity. With the army on the defensive, he seized his chance to settle a power struggle between politicians and generals that has simmered since Hosni Mubarak’s downfall last year.

Those who underestimated Mr Morsi should consult the seven bruised generals who are now beginning their compulsory “retirement”, including Field Marshal Mohammed Hussein Tantawi, formerly the armed forces commander and Egypt’s de facto ruler since the revolution last year.

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If there’s a single company that illustrates the huge range of opportunities and challenges facing the U.S. economy today, it might be Caterpillar, the heavy-machinery giant based in Peoria, Ill. Like most other firms, Cat took a hit following the financial crisis. But since then, it’s bounced back–and how. After a strong second quarter, the firm is on track for a second record-breaking year in a row and will likely sell $70 billion of its famous yellow earthmovers, tractors and mining equipment globally.

As products roll off the line at the recently expanded East Peoria factory, every one is marked with a flag that designates its final destination. There are a lot of Chinese, Indian and Australian flags. But there are plenty of American ones too, and their numbers are growing. “We put those flags on a few years back. I wanted our workers to understand that globalization isn’t necessarily about someone taking your job,” says Caterpillar CEO Doug Oberhelman. Indeed, Caterpillar thinks less about a single world market than many regional ones. The company is global, but where it can, it sources and produces locally, which is a natural hedge against everything from oil prices to currency risk to changing customer tastes. The bottom line: jobs and growth are split more or less equally between the U.S. and the rest of the world.

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United Church of Canada General Secretary Nora Sanders is optimistic about the future of the church, despite the challenges.

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Americans especially like to focus on the total fertility rate, or TFR, the average number of children a woman can expect to have during her lifetime. For years, America was unusual among rich countries in having a relatively high TFR of around 2.1, the so-called “replacement rate”, at which a population stabilises over the long term. European countries were typically below that rate, sometimes far below it.

So it comes as something of a shock to discover that in 2011 America’s fertility rate was below replacement level and below that of some large European countries. The American rate is now 1.9 and falling. France’s is 2.0 and stable. The rate in England is 2.0 and rising slightly.

American fertility reached its recent peak in 2007; its fall has coincided with the economic crisis that began at the end of that year….

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Check it out–wow.

Disney officials say they presented “multiple options” to accommodate the religious beliefs of a Muslim woman who is now suing the entertainment giant and claims she unfairly lost her job at a Disneyland Resort café after refusing to remove her head scarf at work.

Imane Boudlal, 28, filed a federal lawsuit against Walt Disney Corp. on Monday, saying she was also discriminated against and harassed for her religious beliefs.

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Nearly two years after her teenage daughter lost all four limbs to a dangerous bloodstream infection, Patricia Kirven is stunned at how little most people know about sepsis.
“You can ask the average person on the street and they don’t know what it is,” said Kirven, mother of Whitney Mitchell, now 20. “I have a friend who says that sepsis is the killer you’ve never heard of.”
Only high-profile cases seem to attract attention, like Whitney Mitchell’s disfiguring infection, or the recent death of a 12-year-old New York boy, Rory Staunton, who developed severe septic shock two days after a minor gym class cut.
That’s despite the fact that hospital stays for sepsis in the U.S. have more than doubled in recent years, accounting for about 1.6 million hospitalizations a year and requiring treatment for some 4,600 new patients every day, according to a 2011 report from the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality.

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We often feel slighted or ignored if the senior pastor isn’t right there when we call him. We wonder if he truly cares about us, question whether he’s a people person, and whine about feeling unheard. Note the irony: We bypass the God of all creation on our quest to meet with someone higher up the church org chart.

Sometimes it’s best to carry our personal needs directly to God. But when you feel the need to call your pastor, when he asks, “What can I do for you?” say that you want to spend a few minutes praying with him, asking God to do something awesome in your church. He just might faint.

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The final choice, of course, rests with the Diocese (speaking through its convention).

And that, it turns out, is a very good place in which to start. Just what is the “Diocese of South Carolina”, and what abilities and powers does it have when it speaks through its convention?

Here we must be careful to distinguish the ecclesiastical realities from the legal realities. Dioceses of a Church have dual personalities: they are participants in the Church of which they are a constituent member, and at one and the same time, they are legal entities (“persons”) in the eyes of the State(s) in which they exist, and have their boundaries.

The Episcopal Church (USA), as has been discussed many times on this blog, is a rather unique entity in the eyes of the secular law. It formed itself in 1789, as an “unincorporated association.” But what do those legal terms actually mean?

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In short, dietetics was a matter of virtue as well as of bodily health. The medical profession doled out advice about how one should eat in the same breath as instructions about how one should live — and about what sort of person one should be.

Traditional dietetic advice now seems banal, with its almost exclusive focus on moderation. For example, dietetic counsel would recommend that patients eat neither too much nor too little; sleep when necessary, but not excessively; exercise, but not violently; and control anger and stress. The Temple of Apollo at Delphi bore the inscription, “Nothing in excess,” while Aristotelian philosophy held that the golden mean was the path to the good.

Given the current frenzy of fad diets and the eternal search for simple remedies for complex conditions, moderation in all things may seem like shabby medicine. But dietetics’ conviction that health and morality are two sides of the same coin is a deep-rooted notion. After all, Christianity lists gluttony as one of the seven deadly sins, while temperance is one of the cardinal virtues.

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An official in the Indian Catholic Church has endorsed the idea that participants in sex-selective abortions should be charged with murder.

The backing by Holy Spirit Missionary Sister Helen Saldanha, secretary of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of India Office for Women, comes as momentum builds to end female feticide, a practice that finds families terminating a pregnancy because the child they are expecting is a girl.

Filing criminal charges for killing a child in the womb because of its sex would “change the killer attitude” toward girls in Indian society, Sister Helen told Catholic News Service.

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Grant, Almighty God, that since thou hast once shone upon us by thy gospel, – O grant, that we may always be guided by this light, and so guided, that all our lusts may be restrained; and may the power of thy Spirit extinguish in us every sinful fervor, that we may not grow hot with our own perverse desires, but that all these being subdued, we may gather new fervor daily, that we may breathe after thee more and more: nor let the coldness of our flesh ever take possession of us, but may we continually advance in the way of piety, until at length we come to that blessed rest, to which thou invites us, and which has been obtained for us by the blood of thy only-begotten Son, our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.

–John Calvin (1509–1564)

The Lord reigns; let the earth rejoice; let the many coastlands be glad! Clouds and thick darkness are round about him; righteousness and justice are the foundation of his throne. Fire goes before him, and burns up his adversaries round about. His lightnings lighten the world; the earth sees and trembles. The mountains melt like wax before the LORD, before the Lord of all the earth. The heavens proclaim his righteousness; and all the peoples behold his glory.

–Psalm 97:1-6

A longtime North Shore clergyman is in line to become one of the first Episcopal priests in the country to be ordained as a Roman Catholic priest.

The Rev. Jurgen Liias, who led Christ Church in Hamilton for 14 years before forming a breakaway Episcopal church in Danvers, has applied to the Vatican to be ordained into a new U.S. ordinariate created by Pope Benedict XVI on Jan. 1.

Liias said he will resign as an Episcopal priest and will be confirmed as a Catholic in a Mass on Wednesday at St. Margaret Church in Beverly Farms. If his application is approved by the Vatican, he will be ordained as a Catholic priest this fall.

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For all the surprisingly rich moral insight of Dark Knight Rises, it is worth pausing to consider if such epiphanies might be obtained in a way that did not require the graphic mayhem.

Put another way, is it time for America’s most gifted filmmakers and other artists to offer a more diverse context for exploring the struggle between good and evil and our unpredictable capacity to make choices that defy our base instincts?

There’s no formula for drawing inspiration from stories and characters that compel an audience’s engagement without desensitizing their conscience.

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The American branch of the Anglican Ordinariate is insufficiently Catholic, critics charge, following the announcement the Ordinariate of the Chair of St Peter will not use the traditional Latin mass ”“ the Extraordinary Form of the Roman Rite.
Clergy who had been permitted to use the Latin mass by their Anglican bishops tell The Church of England Newspaper they are nonplussed in being forbidden to use the traditional rite now that they are Catholic priests.
On 30 July, Mgr Jeffrey Steenson, the ordinary of the Chair of St Peter and the former bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of the Rio Grande, released a statement clarifying the Ordinariate’s liturgical formularies after some new converts claimed he was bullying them by forbidding the use of the Latin mass.

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Most economists surveyed by USA TODAY have little faith a divided Congress will adequately address looming tax increases and spending cuts, significantly hampering economic growth well into 2013.

The standoff in Washington, along with the global economic slowdown, threatens a U.S. economy that otherwise would be gaining steam on a strengthening U.S. housing market and improving private-sector balance sheets, economists say. The survey of 50 leading economists was conducted Aug. 3-8.

Fifty-three percent of those surveyed don’t think Congress will be able to lessen the impact of $560 billion in tax increases and spending cuts, slated to take effect at year’s end, in a way that avoids significant damage to the economy. The Congressional Budget Office says the so-called fiscal cliff would slice up to 4 percentage points off growth next year — causing the economy to contract in the first half — if all the deficit-slicing measures occur at once.

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“I’m actually not a music major. This is really a hobby that accidentally became a profession,” [Alexis] Dawdy says. “I’m studying linguistics, and I’m 17 credits out from graduation. My goal is to do it debt-free, and this helps a lot. This pays for books and this pays for food.”

Dawdy says she’s encountered nothing but hospitality from her neighbors in Lansing.

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For the severely injured victims and their families, the Colorado shooting poses challenges that go beyond physical pain and recovery. Some of the victims, like Soudani, are uninsured; others worry that they won’t be able to pay their rent and other bills. A few are likely to be permanently disabled and perhaps unable to work. Many are young adults, faced with a staggering setback.

“They have to cope with finding a new normal,” said Laura Bacak, director of case management at the Medical Center of Aurora, which treated 18 of the shooting victims. “It’s particularly difficult for a young person who is just starting their life, because they have to grieve the loss of what might have been.”

Caleb Medley, 23, an aspiring comic, has been in a medically induced coma since the shooting. Medley, who doesn’t have health insurance, missed the birth of his son, according to his friends.

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