The fate of an Afghan imprisoned for converting to Christianity may be the subject of a meeting between General David Petraeus and President Karzai. The prosecutor says he and another convert face the death penalty or life imprisonment.
Delaying having children leads to more stressful lives for men and women , because it increases both “the likelihood that the greatest childrearing demands come at the same time that job and career demands are great – particularly among the well-educated” and “the likelihood that one’s parents may begin to suffer ill health and need assistance before one’s children are fully launched.”
At the same time, women with more education are having fewer children , though “women with professional degrees and Ph.D.’s are slightly more likely to have had children than their counterparts with just master’s or bachelor’s degrees.”
Ethiopian monasticism, which began in the fifth century, is now threatened , as the nation’s previous Marxist government robbed them of their farms and now, according to one scholar, the monasteries are seen “as a liability for the church and country, an impediment to her development or at best something with little to contribute to the future.”
The Patriarch of Constantinople, the head of the world’s Orthodox Churches, celebrates ” the official recognition of our Patriarchate as a legal person” in Turkey, accomplished at the direction of the European Court of Human Rights.
The Anchoress suggests that “microchimerism” teaches us something about the Immaculate Conception .
A British Catholic bishop has criticized the country’s practice of sending Iraqi Christians back to Iraq . ““We know the situation of our brothers and sisters still in Iraq who wake at night frightened by the knock at the door, the unusual sound, the gunshot or the explosion, the knowledge that few if any will defend them, the constant fear and tension of not knowing what will happen next,” said Bishop William Kenney. The government claims, implausibly, that it’s safe for them to go back.
The English Bible Society describes the relation to Christianity of the Conservatives , the Liberals , and Labour .
Faculty and students at Duke Divinity School have created the Proper 29 Project , “to provide a forum for homiletic engagement with our moral culpability as Christians in the United States for civilian deaths and torture in Iraq and Afghanistan.”
A Catholic priest reflects on the morality of leaking documents .
Both sides of the immigration debate seize on “partial truths” , one side by flatly opposing any amnesty or relaxation in enforcing the law and the other by undermining respect for the law, writes theologian Carson Holloway.
And one story from a world that, amusingly, still exists: So will Camilla have to curtsey to Kate?
Thanks to Kevin Staley-Joyce, Mary Ellen Kelly, Mark Barrett, the National Catholic Register , and CatholicCulture.org for links.
