Century marks

Christian Century, Nov 20, 2002

NONVIOLENT WEAPONS: Instead of focusing on destroying weapons of mass destruction (WMD), Jeffrey Sachs, director of Columbia University's Earth Institute, thinks we should focus on using weapons of mass salvation (WMS). He has in mind an "arsenal of life-saving vaccines, medicines and health interventions, emergency food aid and farming technologies that could avert literally millions of deaths each year in the wars against epidemic disease, drought and famine." While the U.S. prepares to spend $100 billion to get rid of Iraq's WMD, it has been unwilling to spend more than 0.2 percent of that amount for the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria. "One stark result is that the world's poor live, and especially die, with the awareness that the United States is doing little to mobilize the weapons of mass salvation that could offer them survival, dignity and eventually the escape from poverty." Sachs makes another point: the American right likes to beat up on the United Nations as being an ineffective institution, but the UN's hands-on agencies are effective at what they do--dealing wih issues of health, hunger, and the environment. They'd be even more effective if the U.S. would do its full share to support and fund them (economist.com, October 24).

WAR--WHO NEEDS IT? Iraqis look back to the 1970s as a golden age when newfound oil wealth made their country a political powerhouse and cultural center in the region. But as one Iraqi insists, "Oil is a curse for Iraq." It tempted Saddam Hussein to wage war against his neighbors, Iran and then Kuwait, which led to its downfall. And now many Iraqis are convinced that oil is what's behind the United States' plans for their country. One man said he wished Iraqi oil would dry up so that the rest of the world would leave his country in peace. "With or without war," the Boston Globe (October 29) reports, "Iraq is in shambles." Even in its current state it is conservatively estimated that reconstruction of the country would cost $20 billion. Nearly one-fourth of the children aren't enrolled in primary school--nearly twice as many girls as boys drop out. Fewer than half of the women are literate, a drop from nearly 90 percent two decades ago. The better educated and wealthier are leaving the country for places like Iran and Jordan. Ironically, once-secular Iraq is taking on a more religious posture, a move Saddam seems to support to his own advantage: he is helping to build two of the world's biggest mosques in Baghdad.

FIFTY HOURS OF PRAYER: An Interfaith Prayer for Peace in Iraq is being planned for the weekend of December 6-8, from 6:00 P.M. Friday to 8 P.M. Sunday. This is intended as a grass-roots movement, and people are encouraged to participate by holding prayer services in their own faith tradition, or planning interfaith prayer services sometime during this 50-hour time period or for its duration. (For more information, go to www.peaceprayer.org.)

SHOOT THE MESSENGER? In a recent speech in Rome, Harvard law professor Mary Ann Glendon provided a painful reminder of past American nativism and anti-Catholicism, despite the country's having been founded upon the principle of religious freedom. In 1836 the nation's best-selling book purported to tell the true-life confessions of an ex-nun. The Awful Disclosures of the Hotel Dieu Nunnery, by Maria Monk, which sold 300,000 copies, told tales about Catholic nuns and priests engaging in sexual misconduct. Though it was all a hoax, it still fanned the flames of anti-Catholic passions: arsonists destroyed most of the Irish quarter of Boston the next year, and similar atrocities took place throughout the country. Glendon goes on to claim that the Boston Globe's relentless coverage of priestly sexual misconduct was motivated by a similar anti-Catholic spirit. The Globe's coverage of pedophile priests and bishops who covered for them created "a climate of hysteria the likes of which has not been seen in Boston since the Ursuline convent was burnt down," says Glendon. "I often hear it said that the Globe will receive a Pulitzer Prize for reporting on this matter. All I can say is that if fairness and accuracy have anything to do with it, awarding the Pulitzer Prize to the Boston Globe would be like giving the Nobel Peace Prize to Osama bin Laden" (Zenit News Agency, November 4).

PERSECUTED ANGLICANS? When Rod Liddle, associate editor of the Spectator, was introduced recently in the British press as a "regular Anglican churchgoer," he was met with ridicule by his associates and friends. Says Liddle: "I suspect that they would have been very surprised if they'd discovered that I was a Sufi mystic or a Zoroastrian or an Islamic fundamentalist. But they wouldn't have dared laugh, would they? It's the `Anglican' bit that really made them snigger." Liddle thinks the church has been complicit in its own cultural demise. He reports that until recently there was an informal Church of England support group in Oxford for vicars who admitted not believing in God. No wonder that some headlines in England expressed shock that Rowan Williams, the new archbishop of Canterbury, "had not merely read the Bible but also, actually, agreed with quite a lot of it." English tolerance has reached a zenith, Liddle argues, leaving Brits "with a sort of vapid humanism which is accepting of everything except a belief in God" (Spectator, October 24).