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In Brief...World News Reviewby John Ross Schroeder and Darris McNeelyThe Specter of Financial Instability
Ostensibly, both the United States and Britain are in great financial shape, perhaps more prosperous than ever before. Yet, several times since the advent of the Asian economic crisis, world finances have been on the brink of a chaotic comedown. Each time saw a valiant rescue. Yet as noted author and columnist Paul Johnson recently wrote, "Asia is the detonator-the Big Bomb is in Wall Street where speculative fever recalls 1929" (The Daily Mail). Even though there are now far more safeguards than during the Great Depression of the 1930s, the speed at which the stock market presently moves is astonishingly frightening, particularly to those less well versed in new marketing technology. What goes up can come down very rapidly. The once proud British bank, Barings, was driven to its knees in just a few weeks by the activities of one renegade trader. Wall Street has been riding high, big time. Yet well-respected financial guru Alan Greenspan, chairman of the U.S. Federal Reserve Bank, worries about a crash and has urged marketeers to effect a slowdown which hopefully will produce what he terms "a soft landing." Summing up the situation across the Atlantic, Paul Johnson writes that "In Europe there are fanatical idealogues, hell-bent on federalism and a common currency for political reasons, whatever the economic and financial cost." Meanwhile a massive International Monetary Fund cash injection relieved a Japanese economy judged to be in its worst state since World War II. Prosperity Without Morality—the Moral Maze America has been shocked and stunned by a spate of school killings callously perpetrated by young people-usually one student murdering and wounding other students. This phenomenon was unthinkable in the 1940s and 50s. The U.S.A. is the richest society on this planet, but moral values are often given short shrift by the media and other parts of North American culture. Basic concepts of right and wrong have not been sufficiently imbedded into young American minds. The country is booming, but its citizens are busily ingesting more "lifestyle" pills-like Viagra-than ever before. At 60 we seem to want to be 17. Decades ago, in his prophetic novel, Brave New World, author Aldous Huxley described a society hooked on soma, a drug aptly described as "the pill of universal happiness and enhanced performance." Some people neither want to grow old or grow up. They never leave high school. The cult of youth tends to be pervasive. Across the waters in Britain, the Archbishop of Canterbury has called for a strong moral direction. He has rightly warned that taking Britain into the 21st century "would be an immense challenge for the church." From time to time he and other astute observers lament the coarsening of morals that tends to characterize modern England. A recent look at official statistics showed that "Britain has the world's highest rate of unmarried teenage mothers." Of those that have children before age 20, 87 percent are unwed. Yet sex without real love is constantly promoted in movies, pop songs, teen magazines and television. Surprisingly, the number of women who leave their husband and children has tripled in the last three years. Desertion used to be a dubious male preserve, but times are apparently changing fast. The Failure of Religion Vulnerable young people have not been educated into a right understanding of the true values of living. The Ten Commandments are no longer in vogue, not even in the established Anglican church. No wonder one in five British girls apparently tries suicide. No wonder a fifth of adults in the Western world carry the sexually-transmitted Herpes virus. Anglican church attendance has recently dropped to all-time record lows-plunging downwards at the rate of more than 600 per week, nationally. A popular columnist, A. N. Wilson, titled one recent weekly feature article, "Is It Time to Shut Down the Church of England?". Small wonder then that the government is planning "religion-free baptisms." Poetry and music would replace prayers and holy water. Surely a secular baptism is a new wrinkle on the earth. We have let our young people down. Pope Urges Faithful to Keep Sunday Holy "Sunday is a day which is at the very heart of the Christian life" writes Pope John Paul II in a recently issued apostolic letter called "Dies Domine" (the Day of the Lord). "From the beginning of my Pontificate, I have not ceased to repeat: Do not be afraid! Open, open wide the doors to Christ! In the same way, today I would strongly urge everyone to rediscover Sunday: do not be afraid to give your time to Christ!" The letter, addressed to "the Bishops, Clergy, and Faithful," intends to boost the dwindling number of regular mass-goers and reiterate the churches theological doctrine of the first day of the week. In several references it admonishes Christians to "ensure that civil legislation respects their duty to keep Sunday holy." Low church attendance among Catholics in much of the world has prompted in part the Pope's charge. In Vienna last month the Pope told Catholics: "Do whatever you can to preserve Sunday. Make it clear that this day must not be worked [on], since it must be celebrated as the day of the our Lord." Only 17 percent of Austrian Catholics attend mass. The percentage is lower in many Latin countries where there are major shortages of priests for the large Roman Catholic populations. Some church leaders have urged an end to sporting events on Sundays. Cardinal John O'Conner of New York appealed for a stop to Little League games on Sunday mornings earlier this spring. Citing many ancient references to church fathers, the pope's letter offers a contemplative, philosophical vision of the meaning of Sunday. Sunday "is the supreme day of faith" and "given its many meanings and aspects, and its link to the very foundations of the faith, the celebration of the Christian Sunday remains, on the threshold of the Third Millennium, an indispensable element of our Christian identity," he said. The letter is a significant statement to the church about the importance of venerating one day above all others. The full text of the letter can be downloaded from the Vatican web site at http://www.vatican.va. AIDS Conference Scientists, doctors, activists, and journalists meeting at a U.N. sponsored AIDS conference in Geneva last month heard chilling news about the widespread impact of the disease and the rapid rate at which it is spreading. 16,000 new cases arise each day and currently there are 31 million people invected with the HIV virus. The overwhelming majority of the 30 million people infected with HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, are doomed to die because they live in countries that cannot provide adequate health care. Africa is being hit so fiercely that it now rivals history's greatest and deadliest epidemics-plague in Middle Ages and influenza in 1918-1919. The U.N. AIDS program cited four reasons for the high infection rates in Africa. One is that more women of childbearing age are infected with HIV in Africa than elsewhere. A second is that African women have more children on average than those on other continents. Thus, one infected woman may pass the virus on to a higher number of children. A third reason is that nearly all children in Africa are breast-fed. Breast-feeding is thought to account for between a third and a half of all HIV transmission from mother to child. A fourth reason is that new drugs are less readily available in Africa than in the industrialized world. At the last such conference held two years ago in Vancouver, delegates heard promising reports of new vaccines. Such hoped for vaccines have failed, producing AIDS in test situations rather than preventing the disease. Other anti-AIDS drugs have also proven futile. Participants left the conference facing the fact that the best approach to fighting the disease was the one with which they began-prevention. Sadly, two of the most effective tools of prevention, abstinence and maintaining a monogamous relationship run counter to the prevailing mores of those groups most affected by the disease. With a vaccine against HIV a distant hope, AIDS is with us to stay for a long time. (Source: International Herald Tribune and the Wall Street Journal) |
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Keywords: moral failure Sunday AIDS
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