{"id":246,"date":"2007-10-23T09:05:00","date_gmt":"2007-10-23T09:05:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/viamedia\/2007\/10\/randomness.html"},"modified":"2007-10-23T09:05:00","modified_gmt":"2007-10-23T09:05:00","slug":"randomness","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2007\/10\/randomness.html","title":{"rendered":"Randomness"},"content":{"rendered":"

Just a few of the many tidbits that have interested me during the past few days of internet wanderings:
\nThe Catholic News Service News Hub is back and improved, both visually and in terms of content.\u00a0 The core remains interesting stories from Catholic newspapers around the country, but added to the mix are blog-like nuggets from CNS reporters, notably John Thavis in Rome, who, for example, had an account of the President of Tanzania’s recent audience with the Pope. Nothing earth-shaking, but a little window into that Vatican world. <\/a>
\nVia the News Hub, a story about a Canadian midwife who is headed to Russia:<\/a><\/p>\n

Pregnancy and childbirth and babies have always fascinated Heather Holtslag. So she went to the Philippines to become a midwife and for two years she lived and served among the poorest of the poor.
\nNow, just months after being certified as a professional midwife, Holtslag, 28, is getting ready to go to Russia to help improve the lot of women and babies there.
\nThe Mother of God Mission Society, a Catholic mission society that operates several women support centres in the Russian Far East, invited the St. Albert midwife to lead its operations there.
\nWhile a midwife’s main task is to help women through pregnancy, Holtslag’s efforts will contain a pro-life focus in a society where abortion is rampant.
\nThe average woman in Russia has had between three and nine abortions in her lifetime and some have had as many as 20. Holtslag hopes to reduce the number of abortions.
\n“Because this is a Catholic mission, all of the women’s centres provide services and referrals and counselling that are in line with the teachings of the Catholic Church, particularly on its stance for life,” she said.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Here’s the website for the Mission Society<\/a> – you may have seen some of the priests involved in this mission on EWTN.\u00a0 The Women’s Care Centers are only part of their ministries.
\nAmerica Magazine has posted a 1993 article <\/a>by new Louisana governor Bobby Jindal on his conversion. (Gashwin Gomes, also a convert from Hinduism, adds his own perspective.)<\/a>
\nJen Ambrose<\/a> went to Shanghai and recounts what she saw, sites which included the Catholic cathedral. <\/a>
\nIf it’s theology you want, Sandro Magister looks at what’s being said about the 100th anniversary of the anti-Modernist encyclical Pascendi Gregis <\/a>
\nMore theology: There’s an interesting discussion of “the plain meaning of Scripture” going on that started at Prof. Scott Carson’s “Examined Life” blog <\/a>and has filtered over to other places including Michael Liccione’s Sacramentum Vitae. <\/a>
\nAnd still more theology and life<\/u>:
\nAs you know, the Pope was in Naples this past weekend for the beginning of\u00a0 the International Encounter of Peoples and Religions, organized by the Sant’Egidio Community and the Archdiocese of Naples.
\nHere is the content of his address<\/a>.
\nVia Papa Ratzinger Forum, we have translations of some Italian news accounts of some aspects of the gathering, including some conflicts between the Chief Rabbi of Israel and a Muslim leader from the UAR and a Lebanese Christian leader, conflicts which simmered at lunch (they were all at the Pope’s table, along with other leaders, including Archbishop Rowan Williams) and came to the surface during the meeting’s sessions.<\/p>\n

…Benedict XVI managed to nip a threatened lunch dispute in the bud. But it came up after the Pope had left Naples, at the opening session, no less, of the World Inter-Religious Encounter for Peace.
\nWhen it was Rabbi Metzger’s turn to speak, he departed from his prepared text to say that it was futile to speak about peace while keeping silent about the threat of Iran to eradicate Israel from the face of the earth<\/strong>.
\nEzzedin answered in his turn, telling Metzger that the peaceful and spiritual nature of the encounter demands that political differences between nations should not be a subject for discussion<\/strong>.
\nBut going back to his prepared text, Ezzedin did turn political, assailing the United States for its Middle East policies, and in describing the situation between Israel and Iran, he called Israel ‘a puppet state…regurgitating weapons of mass destruction’ whereas Iran was ‘a peaceful state’ whom the West would deny ‘legitimate and justified access to nuclear research for peaceful development.’
\nYet Ibrahim is a veteran of the Sant’Egidio meetings. But what these encounters [Assisi and its successor meetings] have produced in 21 years is nothing compared to what Benedict XVI’s Regensburg lecture managed in such a short time so far – the letter of the 38 Muslim scholars in October 2006 and the second one from 138 Muslim leaders earlier this month.
\n<\/a>
\nBut at the same time, one should not over-estimate the progress in Muslim-Christian dialog represented by these two letters. Ibrahim, like many of his 137 co-signatories of the second letter, is one of those who has never stated publicly a clear and unequivocal denunciation of Islamist terrorism<\/strong>.
\nThe letter from the 138 was released on October 11 coinciding with the end of the Muslim fasting month of Ramadan. Two facts bear point out in this connection.
\nFirst, that the Pontifical Council for Inter-Religious Dialog in September sent a message of greeting to all Muslims for the end of Ramadan. This has been done every year for some time now.
\nBut this time, great care was given to its contents and its dissemination. It was issued in 22 languages and uses forceful language about the need to assure religious freedom and to condemn terrorism without any reservations.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

(That, a translation of Sandro Magister’s blog entry on the events.)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Just a few of the many tidbits that have interested me during the past few days of internet wanderings: The Catholic News Service News Hub is back and improved, both visually and in terms of content.\u00a0 The core remains interesting stories from Catholic newspapers around the country, but added to the mix are blog-like nuggets…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":180,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-246","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"yoast_head":"\nRandomness - Via Media<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2007\/10\/randomness.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Randomness - 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The Catholicism comes from her side. Amy grew up in a number of places - Indiana - Washington, DC - Lubbock Texas - Arlington, Virginia - DeKalb, Illinois - Lawrence, Kansas - and Knoxville, Tennessee, where the family settled in 1973. She attended Knoxville Catholic High School, then the University of Tennessee where she majored in history. She received an MA in Church History from Vanderbilt University, where she wrote a thesis on the changing role of women in 19th century American Protestantism, and the ways Scripture was used to justify those changes. She worked as as a teacher in Catholic high schools and a Parish Director of Religious Education and started writing for the diocesan press - the Florida Catholic - in 1988. Amy has written columns for Our Sunday Visitor and Catholic News Service at times over the past twenty years. Her articles have been published in venues ranging from Our Sunday Visitor to the New York Times to Commonweal. She has written 17 books. 18, if you included the as yet tragically unpublished novel. Amy has five children, ranging in age from 26 to 4 and was married to Michael Dubruiel, who died unexpectedly in February 2009. She lives in Birmingham, Alabama.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/author\/awelborn"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/246","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/180"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=246"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/246\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=246"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=246"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=246"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}