The Great Debate UK

from FaithWorld:

Lively debate among Catholics interpreting pope’s condom remarks

Pope Benedict's surprising view that condoms can sometimes be used to fight AIDS has kindled a lively debate among Roman Catholic theologians and commentators about whether this amounts to a change in Church thinking.

His comments and a Vatican clarification that expanded on them seem to leave no doubt that Benedict has spoken with unprecedented frankness for a pontiff and shifted the focus a bit from the Church's rejection of condoms to avoid disease.

But the format of his remarks -- in a book of interviews with a German journalist rather than an official Vatican document -- and some confusion over translations have opened a gap allowing divergent interpretations.

Conservative Catholic bloggers have reacted with dismay -- one put the book title "Light of the World" over a cartoon of Pandora opening her box and letting the world's evils escape.

"I love the Holy Father very much, he is a deeply holy man and has done a great deal for the Church. On this particular issue, I disagree with him," wrote Rev. Tim Finigan on his blog The Hermeutic of Continuity. The pope's U.S. publisher, Rev. Joseph Fessio, declared: "The pope did not 'justify' condom use in any circumstances. And Church teaching remains the same as it has always been -- both before and after the pope's statement."

Those who have long argued for allowing condoms as a last resort welcomed the new approach. "The Vatican has been so critical of condoms that it has led some Catholics to think that condoms are somehow intrinsically evil, that there is no conceivable situation where they could be used morally," said Rev. Thomas Reese,  senior fellow at Woodstock Theological Center in Washington. "The pope's new statement blasts that idea out of the water."

Christian Terras, normally a sharp critic of Benedict in his dissident French Catholic magazine Golias, called the tone of the pope's approach "more human and pastoral, closer to the people, less professorial and cerebral."

Following the aid money with Linda Polman

As political leaders wrangle over how best to deal with warring factions in hot spots around the world, enclaves of humanitarian aid workers grapple with how best to help innocent victims of violence.

Author and journalist Linda Polman proposes in “War Games: The Story of Aid and War in Modern Times” that since the end of the Cold War, there is much more at stake than the simple distribution of billions of dollars in aid money each year to fix crisis situations. Aid agencies relegated in the past to the peripheries of war zones and refugee camps now play a very different role.

An estimated 37,000 international non-governmental organisations follow the flow of aid money and compete with each other for billions of dollars, Polman writes, reporting that Organisation of Economic Cooperation & Development (OECD) donor countries contribute $120 billion (84 billion pounds) a year for developmental cooperation and an estimated $11.2 billion for emergency humanitarian relief. Some $6 billion a year is channeled into humanitarian aid out of the combined tax revenues of the world’s richest countries, she says.

Warring factions use money and supplies intended for humanitarian purposes for their own gain.

“In some wars aid capital is decisive,” Polman writes. “Under certain circumstances trading in aid supplies may be the most important economic activity around, and money and goods from NGOs are weapons in military strategies, including those of our own armies.”

Between 2001 and 2008, more than 60 governments allocated more than $15 billion to aid for Afghanistan but “where the money ended up is unclear. Neither the donors nor their INGOs dare to visit the projects they finance. The result is an unfathomable channelling of aid billions that is highly susceptible to fraud.”

“The majority of western INGOs never venture outside Kabul,” says Polman. “Instead they subcontract local and other international NGOs to implement their projects, who in turn engage further subcontractors.”

Pascal Bruckner on “The Tyranny of Guilt”

Europe’s collective sense of guilt weakens its position in international relations, French author and philosopher Pascal Bruckner argues in a new book.

Hampered by a persistent fixation on historical low points — including its role in fascism, communism, racism and imperialism — rather than its positive attributes, Europe by default relinquishes the protection of its sovereignty to the U.S., Bruckner proposes in “The Tyranny of Guilt: An Essay on Western Masochism“.

“If America were to collapse tomorrow, Europe would fall like a house of cards,” he writes.

Bruckner is the author of 18 books, including the novel “Bitter Moon“, which served as the foundation for a film directed by Roman Polanski.

“Europe should at least coordinate its strategic capacities and provide itself with a centre of military power capable of making up for American deficiencies, which are becoming increasingly apparent.”

Bruckner spoke to Reuters after giving a talk at the RSA in central London. Watch the video here:

from FaithWorld:

Did climate change stoke past religious persecution?

A thought-provoking new book on Christianity's "lost history" holds that one of the central causes of 14th century religious persecution may well have been climate change. You can read my interview with author Philip Jenkins about "The Lost History of Christianity: The Thousand-Year Golden Age of the Church in the Middle East, Africa and Asia -- and How It Died" on the Reuters website here.

"The Chronology of Christian sufferings under Islam closely mirrors that of Jews in Christian states," he writes, noting that "Around 1300, the world was changing, and definitely for the worse."

"If we seek a common factor that might explain this simultaneous scapegoating of vulnerable minorities, by far the best candidate is climate change, which was responsible for many economic changes in these years, and increased poverty and desperation across the globe."

Jenkins notes that after a period of warming that had seen Europe's population double from the 11th to the 13th centuries, the world entered a period of cooling which historians have long dubbed "The Little Ice Age." Cooler, wetter summers hit harvests, leading to famines in Europe. Meanwhile, in the Middle East, there was widespread environmental collapse in the face of desertification.

This was all followed of course by the Black Death of the mid-14th century, which struck severely weakened societies and in Europe saw fresh persecution and pogroms against Jewish communities. This pushed many Jews to less developed, eastern regions of the continent; and Christians in Muslim societies also eked out their existence mostly in marginal or remote areas.

Jenkins is hardly the first historian to highlight the impact of climate change on past societies. But his observations are sobering against the backdrop of global warming and environmental pressures in our own time and the role many analysts think they are playing in stoking social conflict in places such as Nigeria and India, where religious tensions run high.