Watching the World
New Vatican Concordat
● After 16 years of negotiations, the Italian Parliament signed a new concordat with the Vatican, replacing the one concluded between fascist dictator Benito Mussolini and Pope Pius XI in 1929. The new concordat ends the Vatican’s favored status as a “sacred city”—though it remains an independent state under papal authority—as well as Roman Catholicism’s reign as the state religion. Additionally, church marriage annulments are now subject to state confirmation, compulsory religious education in the schools is eliminated and clergymen arrested for crimes do not have a right to “special treatment”—all of which were provisions of the old concordat.
“The new concordat is another example of the diminishing hold of the Roman Catholic church in civil life in Italy,” says a report in The New York Times.
“Economic Crisis”
● A recent study released by Worldwatch Institute asserts that the depletion and misallocation of natural resources is primarily responsible for what it calls “the worst worldwide economic crisis in a half century.” The study concluded that the world’s increasing militarization—which is consuming a growing percentage of raw materials, labor and capital, and which cost an estimated $663 billion in 1983—deserves a major part of the blame. Other factors cited are soil erosion, deforestation, high population growth, dwindling oil supplies and the failure to develop nuclear power as a major source of energy.
“New Epidemic”
● “Four of ten girls who are now 14 years old will be pregnant before they are 20,” reports The Los Angeles Times. Commenting on this “new epidemic,” the article describes the economic and emotional hardships these young people face, including possibly forgoing education, a job or a stable homelife. The article adds that fewer than half of teenage mothers finish high school and that their income is half that of women who give birth after age 20. Additionally, teenage mothers are 92 percent more likely to be anemic and to have other complications of premature birth than are mothers over 20 years of age.
Helping the Nazis
● A recently declassified U.S. State Department document, as well as testimony from a French Nazi-hunter, reports The New York Times, has once again raised the charge that the Vatican aided Nazis to escape from Europe after World War II. The document, written in 1947 by a member of the American embassy in Rome, said that in some Latin-American countries the Vatican’s directives influenced their foreign missions to take an attitude “almost favoring the entry into their country of former Nazis and former Fascists.” One former SS colonel “wanted for wartime killings of as many as 250,000 Jews in mobile poison gas vans,” according to the report, was shielded in “convents of the Holy See” in Rome for 18 months after he escaped from American troops. “The justification of the Vatican for its participation in this illegal traffic [which included other illegal emigrants besides Nazis],” stated the document, “is simply the propagation of the faith.”
“Carnival of Nationalism”
● It was called “the worst moment of the Winter Olympics” in a New York Times editorial, when only 50 people, mostly relatives, showed up at the airport to welcome the American hockey team home from Sarajevo, Yugoslavia. Unlike the 1980 American team, which defeated a heavily favored Soviet team for the gold medal in 1980 at Lake Placid, New York, the 1984 team placed seventh, “which was somehow felt to be a disgrace.” “In truth, the team disgraced no one,” the editorial said, adding that “winning . . . gold medals is no proof of American virtue or strength.” Claiming that the Games “exploit flags and anthems” and are “a carnival of nationalism,” it praised skier Phil Mahre, one of four U.S. gold-medal winners, for saying in an interview that he did not ski for family or country ‘but for himself.’
‘Ability of Infants’
● “One of the most exciting developments in the whole field of psychology is our new understanding of the great ability of the infant to learn,” marvels Yale University professor Dr. Edward Zigler. But how early should children be taught? Dr. Bernice E. Cullinan of the International Reading Association asserts that “parents should begin teaching kids to read the moment they bring them home from the hospital” by reading aloud to them and showing them pictures in books. However, she believes that formal instruction in reading should not begin “until the age of 6, and maybe not then, for all kids.” While other authorities see no harm in teaching children at an even earlier age, it is generally agreed that parents should not pressure their children. “If you try to push children to read too early,” said Dr. John H. Flavell, professor of psychology at Stanford University, they “just turn off.”
Sharper With Age
● Staying socially involved, maintaining intellectual interests and having a flexible personality are major factors in preserving or improving mental capacities in old age, claim recent studies on aging as reported in The New York Times. In fact, the studies assert that some of the most important forms of intellectual growth can continue well into the 80’s. For example, crystallized intelligence, that is, the ability to use information to make judgments and solve problems, “continues to rise over the life span in healthy, active people,” meaning people with an absence of diseases that affect the brain, such as a stroke. “The widespread belief that there is devastating cell loss in the elderly brain,” says the report, appears to be “unfounded.”
“Twinkie Defense”
● A San Francisco man shot the city’s mayor in the head four times, then reloaded and killed a city supervisor with five more shots. Recently he was paroled after only five years in prison. Why was he released so soon? The Plain Dealer of Cleveland, Ohio, reports that at the man’s trial a psychiatrist had testified that this man was “incapable of acting with malicious intent” because the excessively high sugar content of his junk-food diet “created a chemical imbalance in his brain.” The jury therefore convicted him of a lesser crime. Criticizing the rationale of this so-called Twinkie defense (using the name of a popular high-sugar confection in the United States), the report noted that it would not win a reduced sentence for a defendant in Ohio, but that committing a crime while under the influence of alcohol might.
Horoscope Controversy
● An article that appeared in L’Osservatore Romano sparked a religious controversy when it criticized Catholics who consult horoscopes. “Like astrology, palm-reading, card-reading and other things of this sort,” said the author, theologian Gino Concetti, “horoscopes are against the religious principles of the Bible.” Yet other church officials disagreed. Jesuit theologian Virginio Rotondi said that consulting them was not a sin and that “many people find a haven in horoscopes. [Horoscopes] help to safeguard their values.” Supporters of horoscopes claimed that at least three popes had regularly consulted astrologers. Horoscopes are a regular feature of newspapers in this over-90-percent-Catholic country. Please see Deuteronomy 18:10-12 for the Bible’s viewpoint on such practices.
‘Dramatic Decline’
● “The decline over the past 30 years has been dramatic,” said clergyman Richard Hamper, general secretary of the Free Church Federal Council, regarding the falling membership of the British Free Churches. The Guardian of London reports that “the number of children and young people belonging to the churches has fallen from 1.58 million to 573,000, while adult membership has declined by more than 600,000 to 1.05 million.” Why the decline? The report notes that Free Church members are divided politically, socially and theologically. And, according to Hamper, “there is a lack of consistent purpose and will within the council itself.”
“Hooked” on Running
● “LSD (long slow distance) has emerged as the drug of the eighties,” says the airline magazine United. Of the 25 million Americans who consider themselves regular runners, thousands “have become dependent on the daily dose of endorphins stimulated by their run. Many become restless and irritable if denied their mileage.” This “addiction” also leads to such injuries as shin splints, knee membranes that wear thin, foot pain, jogger’s kidney, Morton’s foot (enlargement of the second toe), stress fractures, tendinitis, and irregular menstrual periods in women. Medical authorities recommend a more moderate approach to running.
“Bean Sprout Generation”
● That is how some educators describe modern Japanese youth. These children are bigger than those 20 years ago, but that is where the comparison ends. The Asahi Evening News notes that so much emphasis is put on schooling and getting into better schools that “many of them can no longer manage even the simplest manual skills.” Up to 60 percent of youths surveyed have not peeled an apple, cracked an egg or even set the table once in their life. “Parents these days,” observed a Ministry of Education official, “tend to think passing school tests is the only thing that matters.”
Misleading Tobacco Ads
● The American Heart Association, the American Cancer Society and the American Lung Association recently accused the major tobacco companies of “misleading” and “irresponsible” advertising, reports The New York Times. The multimillion-dollar advertising campaign contends that the health impact of smoking is still ‘an open question.’ A spokesman of one company has even appeared on television stating that no causal link has been established between smoking and cancer, emphysema or heart disease. All he admits is that smoking “may well stain your teeth.” In a heated news conference the health officials charged that the ad campaign was nothing more than “a smoke-screen” by a “desperate industry.” They contended, according to the report, that “some 80,000 scientific papers established beyond any reasonable doubt that smoking caused cancer, heart disease, lung illness and other damage.”