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February 06, 2005 |
Jesuit Refugee Service (JRS) was one of the first humanitarian aid organizations to respond to the tsunami; thirty minutes after the disaster, JRS workers on motorbikes were combing Banda Aceh's streets, looking to transport the injured to a medical clinic across the street from the agency's office.
JRS had three staff members in Banda Aceh, Indonesia, at the time. The house from which they worked was lightly damaged by the earthquake; the waters caused by the tsunamis never reached the part of the city where the house is located.
In Calang, a small village on Aceh's west coast, JRS worked with a group of refugees who had fled the province's ongoing guerrilla conflict. JRS said that of the 5,000 people who lived in the village fewer than 100 survived.
The agency is still serving Calang and its isolated survivors. The only way to reach the group is by an eight-hour boat ride. The agency sent a ship filled with food, clothing, and medical supplies January 23.
The Indonesian government and some nongovernmental organizations have said the health care system for Banda Aceh is working well and is containing illnesses and that the region has an abundance of doctors. JRS workers said those statements were misleading and irresponsible, citing their own experience of seeking medical help for their beneficiaries. [Source: CNS. Do not repost electronically]
Volunteers from Jesuit Refugee Service (JRS) who arrived by boat on January 24 at Aceh island, about a two-hour boat ride from the city of Banda Aceh on the tip of Sumatra island, discovered fallen coconut trees, rotting corpses, and debris.
Villages were completely destroyed, and JRS staffers found cattle huddled in the midst of debris.
The JRS team that arrived nearly one month after the tsunami was the first relief group to visit the island. Team members planned to survey the damage and make plans to return displaced villagers. They were joined by volunteers who helped bury the dead.
Only 600 of about 1,500-2,000 villagers in Lampuyang and Lhoh survived the tsunami.
Volunteers told how 300 children survived because they were in school at the time, and their teachers helped them run to the hills, which formed a steep barricade to the high waters. The villages were right along the seashore.
College-age volunteers from a civic group in the town of Lampung, near Banda Aceh, worked January 25 to find and bury the badly decayed bodies in a mass grave. Strong, constant ocean winds tempered the smell of death.
By mid-afternoon January 25, the JRS team had already pitched several large tents for the return of the villagers. [Source: CNS. Do not repost electronically]
The southeast Asia tsunami has brought mankind face-to-face with its moral responsibilities, argues the Jesuit journal Civilta Cattolica.
In its January 15 issue, Civilta Cattolica editorializes that there is a danger that the Asian tragedy will be "quickly forgotten." The magazine says it is important to remain conscious of the human suffering caused by this natural disaster, "because it could be the occasion for a call to the conscience of contemporary man."
Civilta Cattolica remarks that the tsunami has prompted many observers to ask why God allows so much suffering. It is a mistake, the editorial says, to "see in natural disasters a divine punishment for the sins of men." The workings of nature—including such destructive episodes—are a part of life, the magazine argues.
Through better scientific understanding and the application of appropriate technology, people can prepare for the possibility of disasters, and through charitable relief they can allay the suffering, according to the editorial.
"Unfortunately, that is not the orientation that directs science and technology today," the magazine editorial says. Instead, Civilta notes, much of science is directed toward profit interests or military domination. The funds devoted to armaments could better be used, the editorial says, in the campaign against AIDS, hunger, and illiteracy.
The worldwide response to the Asia tragedy could awaken consciences, the Jesuit journal suggests. [Source: www.jesuits-europe.org]
Joseph Werth SJ, the Bishop of Transfiguration Diocese of Novosibirsk, was elected as the new president of Russian Catholic Bishop's Conference (KKEP) at its annual General Body meeting, held recently in St Petersburg, Russia. He said in his message that the Catholic Church will do all the possible to collaborate with the Russian Orthodox Church in proclaiming the Gospel.
In the Russian Federation there are four Catholic dioceses, with four bishops including the Moscow Archdiocese. Bp Werth succeeds Metropolitan Archbishop Thaddeus Kondrusiewicz as president of KKEP.
Bp Werth was appointed as the Apostolic Administrator of Catholics in Siberia in 1991, and in 2002 he became bishop of newly created Diocese of Transfiguration. [Source: www.jesuits-europe.org]
A national conference to educate and encourage those who practice Ignatian spirituality as well as those involved in works rooted in Ignatian spirituality will be held July 28 31 at Saint Louis University.
The conference, “Sharing God: The Ignatian Way,” will feature presentations and small group workshops. Keynote presentations will address Eastern and Western ways of finding God in Ignatian spirituality; living the essential practices of this spirituality; and the discerning Ignatian lifestyle that senses God's presence in all things.
Keynote speakers include Paul Coutinho SJ, director of the Ignatian Center at DeNobili College in Pune, India; David Fleming SJ, editor of the Review for Religious; and Larry Gillick SJ, a spiritual director, Ignatian scholar, and director of the Deglman Center for Ignatian Spirituality at Creighton University.
Kathleen Coffey-Gunther PhD, a practicing psychotherapist and certified spiritual director in Milwaukee, will consider the guidance that the Spiritual Exercises can offer in resolving life's experiences of impasse. Mark Thibodeaux SJ, a spiritual director, retreat director, and high school teacher in Houston, will discuss scripture's help in maintaining one's prayer and daily life.
Cost for the conference is $150 (before July 1). For registration information, call Saint Louis University at (314) 977-2509 or go online at www.slu.edu/conferences/isc/
After a meeting with Spain's health minister January 18, the bishops' spokesman Jesuit Fr Juan Antonio Martinez Camino told reporters that "condoms have their context in the integral and global prevention of AIDS."
The next day, Spain's bishops said they have not changed their opinion about condoms and regard their use in any situation as "immoral sexual conduct."
The statement reiterated that Fr Martinez had been speaking in the context of a recent report published by the medical journal, The Lancet, which endorsed the "ABC method" ("Abstain; Be faithful/reduce partners; use Condoms") of combating HIV/AIDS.
Signed by more than 150 international HIV/AIDS experts, The Lancet's endorsement advises that it is not essential that every organization promote all three elements and that "each can focus on the part(s) they are most comfortable supporting." The journal also found that all three elements of the ABC approach were "essential to reducing HIV incidence.... The overall programmatic mix should include an appropriate balance of A, B, and C interventions."
The bishops' statement said Fr Martinez had told the health minister in their meeting that abstinence and conjugal fidelity--supported by the church--were key pillars of the ABC program.
The Catholic Church, whose agencies provide 25 percent of the care to AIDS sufferers worldwide, does not have an official position on the use of condoms to prevent transmission of AIDS. The issue is not addressed in the "Catechism of the Catholic Church," and the debate among Catholic theologians is said to be still evolving.
However, the Spanish bishops said "it is not possible to advise using condoms, as that is contrary to personal morality." [Source: CNS. Do not repost electronically]
"Physics focuses on the makeup and behavior of matter, of the material world, of physical reality," said Fr Bill Stoeger SJ, a staff astrophysicist at the Vatican Observatory in Tucson.
But another reality is that most students tend to avoid physics, thinking it too difficult or nerdy a subject.
The lack of young people getting into the field prompted the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization to designate the year 2005 as the International Year of Physics in the hopes of revamping physics' image from frumpy to fun.
"It's also celebrating some landmark discoveries made over the past 100 years," said Fr Stoeger.
The year 2005 marks the 100th anniversary of the publication of Albert Einstein's major breakthroughs in special relativity, quantum mechanics, and Brownian motion—-theories that changed the way people see the world, and, say some physicists, the way people see God.
"We have to be careful about drawing parallels too closely, but in the long run, [Einstein's] discoveries enriched spirituality," Fr Stoeger said.
For example, he said, quantum theory does away with the old assumption that an observer can watch nature—at a subatomic level—unfold without having any impact on what is observed. Instead, the observer is always a participant, interacting with even the tiniest pieces of matter.
"This carries over in an analogous way to spirituality, that God is always a participant," and not someone observing from afar, removed from his creation, Fr Stoeger said. [Source: CNS. Do not repost electronically]
In January, Fr James Talbot SJ pled guilty to sexual assault charges from students he taught at Boston College High School in the late 1970s. He was sentenced to five to seven years, plus three years of probation during a hearing in Suffolk Superior Court.
Fr Harold Ridley SJ, who served as president of Loyola College in Maryland for the past decade, died on January 18 at his home on Loyola's campus. He was 65.
David Haddad, who came to Loyola in 1999 as Vice President for Academic Affairs, has been named interim president.
Under Fr Ridley's leadership, Loyola College recorded a nearly five-fold increase in applications to the undergraduate program. He also oversaw the completion of a record-breaking capital campaign. [Source: Loyola College]
The Ontario Municipal Board has rejected Jesuit arguments that the spiritual values invested in their 600 acres of farmland north of Guelph, Ontario, are incompatible with building a Wal-Mart next door.
In early January, the board ruled that Wal-Mart is free to build a new shopping center next to the Jesuit retreat center and between Catholic and Protestant cemeteries.
Religious values, which the Jesuits argued are in direct conflict with consumerist values represented by Wal-Mart, cannot be part of the planning process, the board ruled.
"No one has a license to create a 'zone of exclusivity', which would be the result if the position of the Jesuits was adopted," read the Ontario board's decision.
Though the increased traffic and noise from a Wal-Mart may make spiritual direction and contemplation difficult at the south end of the Ignatius Jesuit Center property, the Jesuits have no intention of pulling up stakes, said Fr Jim Profit SJ, superior of the Jesuit community in Guelph.
Since 1913, Jesuits have been living on the farm, which today is home to a retreat house, an organic vegetable garden, 100 head of cattle, and the Orchard Park business park, where a number of businesses lease space in what was Ignatius College.
Fr Profit said he was glad to see the hearings spark a public debate about the spiritual values of the land and the place of holy ground in an increasingly urbanized and commercialized society. [Source: CNS. Do not repost electronically]
Gonzaga University students Brian Brett, 23, and Pete Tripp, 22, were killed in an avalanche on January 16 during a snowboarding trip south of Mullan, Idaho. A third Gonzaga student, senior Sean Forbes, 22, Bozeman, Montana, escaped and sought help.
Brett, from Bellingham, Washington, was a senior; Tripp, from Bend, Oregon, was a graduate student. Both were studying philosophy. [Source: Gonzaga University]
Creighton University Online Ministries offers a prayer for each day of Lent, resources to help the Lenten journey, and Fr Larry Gillick’s Audio Retreat for Lent, on the Collaborative Ministry web site at www.creighton.edu/CollaborativeMinistry/online.html [Source: Creighton University]
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